Mama's Girl

by Daybreak Jones

Genres: African American Urban

Synopsis

May Jameson has never fully approved of the questionable things her mother does to subsidize her income. That’s why, when her mother encourages her to date a much older man from a family of means, May is torn. Her desire to lead a positive life is at odds with her mother’s advice, but also with the physical desire she feels for this older man. Her best friend’s warning against an affair has the opposite reaction, and May begins a relationship even though she knows she doesn’t really love him. May must make some tough decisions, because although she wants to do right, she is feeling the need to do wrong. Her role models add to her confusion, with some offering real opportunities for jobs and education, while others are caught up in drugs, gambling, and the illegal sale of alcohol. Will she fall into the same trap that holds her mother back from living her best life, or will she ignore that advice and follow her own path to success? May thinks beyond the life she’s been born into, but can she achieve what she sees in her mind?

Release date: October 31, 2017

Publisher: Urban Renaissance

Print pages: 384

Sample

Six Months Earlier . . .

Cold weather is why I have to go to an alternative school. After being tardy forty-two days my junior year, the school administration kicked me out of Calumet High School. Cold, frosty mornings and I just don’t get along. Standing on a corner first thing in the morning and waiting for the bus in the freezing wind is just not my thing. I didn’t do it my first three years of high school, and I’m certainly not going to do it my senior year.

In my freshman, sophomore, and junior years, Uncle Doug, one of Mama’s boyfriends, took me to school. He worked at the grocery store down the street from the school, so dropping me off wasn’t a problem. But then his drunk butt got fired, and that left me with the bus. My mama has a car, but she won’t get up to take me anywhere in the mornings. She tells me to make it the best way I can.

Mama said she caught the bus to high school so why shouldn’t I. She caught the bus, all right, for one year, and then she got pregnant with me and never went back, not even to get her GED.

My best friend, Carlos, his mama wakes him up in the mornings, fixes him breakfast, and helps him get out the door. The alarm on my smart phone wakes me up, and most times when I come home from school, my mama is getting up from one of her naps. And it’s not like she is tired from working. My mama doesn’t have a job. She gets a check once a month, bootlegs, and gets help from her boyfriends, who she calls my uncles. I have a couple of uncles, but I never met any of the aunties who go with them.

We live in the house Grandma and Papa left Mama and me. They died five years ago, six months apart from each other, Papa first then Grandma. I miss them both every day. Our house was happier when they were alive. We were a real family with a mama and a daddy. My mama and I were more like sisters. Papa and Grandma were the grownups. After Papa and Grandma died, Mama had to be the grownup, and being an adult is hard for her.

Mama likes to have parties, and she has them all the time, but they are not happy parties. They are not birthday parties or anniversary parties like Papa and Grandma used to have. They invited real uncles and cousins and aunties over. When Grandma cooked, people would bring more than brown paper bags with bottles in them to our house. For Grandma and Papa’s parties, people brought pies, cakes, bread pudding, and all kinds of stuff here. Those were happy parties.

Mama’s parties are “just because” parties: just because somebody’s check came, just because somebody hit the number, just because somebody got divorced, or just because it’s Friday night. “Just because” parties are not real parties.

Mama and her friends love to party and act happy, but their eyes are sad even when their faces are grinning. It’s a weird thing to see, a smiling face with sad eyes, but I see it all the time at Mama’s parties. Papa told me a person’s eyes tell their story. If that’s true, and I believe it is, then Mama and her loud partying friends are sad, despite the laughs that come out of their mouths.

Well, because Mama spends her time with her partying friends and her boyfriends, I have to get myself up and out in the mornings. A person would think that a mother would take her only child to school but, nope, that’s not the case with Gloria Joyce. She brags about me making the A-B honor roll, but she won’t take me to school.

My mama told me getting up in the mornings would add stress to her life, and stress would give her wrinkles, and wrinkles would make her look older, which cannot happen by any means because she has to stay looking young for the uncles, which I don’t understand, because all the uncles look old. My mama looks too good and too young to be bothered with any of her boyfriends.

My mama is fine, beautiful really. She could be a supermodel—well, a short one. I have seen models who aren’t tall. She could be one. People say I look like her, but Mama is way prettier than me. We share the same light complexion, but Mama’s lips are narrow where mine are thick. Men say they like my thick lips, and I like my lips, but Mama’s thin ones seem to balance her face. Her nose is pointed, and mine is wide and kind of round. She says she wishes she had my nose but, again, hers matches her face. What makes her so pretty is that every part on her face is balanced. No part overshadows another. People are always mistaking us for sisters, and she doesn’t bother to correct them.

Once, the truant officer from my old high school came by the house. He wouldn’t talk to Mama or come into the house because he thought she was my sister, and that we were trying to run a game on him. After she showed him her driver’s license, he gave her my attendance record still standing on the porch. He told her I would be transferred to the alternative school because of my tardiness. In his very next breath, he commented on her not having on a wedding ring and asked her out to dinner. My mama smiled and questioned him on his ability to stop the transfer. He had no power in that area, he told her. Still smiling, she closed the door in his face.

The alternative school isn’t that bad. It doesn’t start until ten o’clock, and there is a bus that picks students up. And by going to the alternative school, I will be graduating this year. If I had stayed at Calumet, I wouldn’t graduate until next year because I failed my eight a.m. English class last year due to my tardiness. That got me really mad because I got mostly A’s on my assignments despite being late. School policy is statewide, the principal told my mama. There was nothing he could do.

At the alternative school, I can retake English at an accelerated rate so I will graduate this year, which should make me happy but, honestly, I just want to stop going to school. Being finished with it will be a relief. I want high school to be over.

We live on Eighty-ninth and Morgan, and the alternative school is all the way out on 115th Street, and it’s a locked campus, and all the extracurricular activities revolve around school stuff. I joined the computer club, but only because of the late bus driver. He’s an actor and model, and he drives the bus part time, and he is too fine, and the way he looked at me from the start told me he was interested.

His father owns the bus company, and my mama says his family has money. I have seen their buses all my life and never thought that it was a family name on the side of them: Talbert Transportation Service. His name is Samuel Talbert. He has curly hair, prefect white teeth, smooth bright skin, green eyes, and he’s tall. He showed me some pictures of himself in magazine ads. And since he models and acts, the whole world must think he is fine, not just Mama and me.

Another good thing about the alternative school, besides Samuel, is Carlos going there too. He got kicked out of Calumet for making and selling fake state IDs. They kicked him out even with him being the starting forward and the highest scorer on the team. He could have gone to jail and gotten kicked out of the school system for good making those phony IDs, but his mama begged the school administration not to report him to the police. Mama says she did more than beg Mr. Anderson, the principal, but Mama never has anything nice to say about Ms. Carol.

They grew up next door to each other just like Carlos and me, and they were best friends too. Now, they give each other phony smiles and halfhearted waves when they pass. Whatever happened between them happened years ago, and only they know what it was. Not even Grandma or Papa knew what stopped them from being best friends.

Carlos and I were best friends before we knew the difference between boy and girl, and we are still best friends today, despite knowing. None of his girlfriends can stand me, and I don’t care. Our friendship is stronger than any boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. We listen to each other, and I tell him when a girl is a tramp. Sometimes a pretty face fools him. Like a lot of dark-skinned boys, he attracts girls with light complexions. I guess opposites do attract, and since he’s tall and plays basketball, the girls really sweat him. But I keep the tramps away, and he does the same for me, but he’s not sure about Samuel yet.

Samuel is five years older than us, so Carlos can’t get any real info on him, but he told me to take my time with him and not to have sex with him. He said older dudes always want to sex up a high school girl and then move on to another one. That much he is certain of. I hope Samuel does want to sex me up because I sure want him to sex me up. If I waited on Carlos to decide who I should have sex with, I would still be a virgin. As far as he is concerned no guy is good enough for me to do it with.

I like that about him though.

What I don’t like about him is that he always keeps me waiting. I waved on the bus this morning because he said his mama was letting him drive her new car to school. I see the new car out there warming up, but no Carlos. My stomach is growling and bubbling a little bit from the three chocolate éclairs I ate last night. I knew I was overdoing it when I ate the second one, but they were so fresh and tasted so good. I hold my stomach while looking out of the door window for Carlos.

His mama bought a Cadillac two weeks ago, and this is the first time she’s letting him drive it to school. I’m hyped about riding in it myself. The pearl white exterior is too fly. Maybe I can run to the bathroom before he comes out. Nope. I see his slow butt coming down the steps now. He stops at the bottom of the step because Mooky has run up on him probably begging for money. Mooky will beg a hungry baby for a sip off a bottle. He wasn’t always like that. At one time we all looked up to him, but not now. Carlos hands him a dollar and Mooky jogs off. I could go out and meet him at the car, but I’m going to make him walk over here and ring the doorbell. My mama should really enjoy hearing the chimes this morning.

Man! Carlos is clean. He is wearing a new off-white leather bomber jacket and a matching cap. Kid is trying to match his mama’s new car. Since he wants to roll like that, let me slip into my mama’s white fox jacket.

I open the front door for him, and the cold air comes in with him. I open the door wide. The frigid blast and the chimes should disturb Mama’s comfort.

“Wow! Baby girl, you are looking mighty good this Friday morning. Good enough to be riding in a Cadillac.” He grins.

Even in the low tone he is speaking in now, his big, dog-barking voice commands my attention. When he talks, his voice always fills up the inside of my head.

I take a step back from the door and tell him, “Man, I look good enough to be riding in a Cadillac every morning. These things I thought you knew.” I hit him with a smile from my newly dentist-whitened teeth.

“Yeah, well, whatever. But you do look good this morning. Does Gloria know you wearing her fox?”

I suck my pearly whites and answer, “This is my coat. You want to see the inscription?”

“Yeah.” His grin challenges me to show the label.

“I’ll show you later. Let’s ride.”

“Yeah, we better get on out of here before Gloria wakes up and peels her fur coat off your back.”

He’s right about that. My mama doesn’t play about her furs, so I push him a little to get him moving out the door. After feeling how cold it is out here, I want to keep the fox on.

Once we get in the Cadillac, I am very impressed. It’s a real nice car with soft beige leather seats and a thick carpet, and it has that new-car smell, which is being bullied by Carlos’s cologne.

“You like the car, don’t you? Yeah, I know you do.” He is cheesing big time as he pulls away from the curb, leaning on the armrest. Profiling is what he calls this leaning while driving.

“So, who are you getting with after school? I know you didn’t beg Ms. Carol for the car just to drive me to school.”

He flips his four fingers up like a seal. He thinks that is a cool gesture, and he says, “I didn’t have to beg her. I told her I needed the car and I picked up the keys,” he says, still leaning hard almost touching the driver’s window.

“Yeah, okay. You can tell that to somebody who don’t know. I am certain that you were on your knees for at least an hour, begging. So, stop frontin,’ and tell me: who is it?”

“You know Michelle Pickens?”

“Yeah, I know Michelle. A brown girl with a big butt and wigs. She’s in my computer lab.”

“She wears wigs?” he asks sitting up straight behind the steering wheel.

“Boy, please, everybody at school knows her hair comes from the Korean shop on Ashland. I hope you ain’t serious about her. Ms. Carol will hurt her feelings too bad if you bring her home. Michelle is smart and all, but you know how your mama is about fake hair.”

“How do you know she wears wigs?”

It is official. I have the bubble guts and need to use the bathroom, like right now. “You can’t see her scalp, stupid, and her hair is different lengths and different styles every day. You had to have noticed. But, then, maybe you didn’t. Boys can act so dumb when they trying to get some pussy.”

I pull down the visor on the passenger side looking for a mirror. The Cadillac has a lighted one. I pull out my eyeliner to add a little flair to my look and to distract myself from thinking about the bathroom.

“I ain’t trying to get some. I now already got some it.” He leans back on the armrest. “And I am not a boy,” he huffs.

“You have been doing it to Michelle?” With the eyeliner in my hand, I notice that my eyes are perfectly lined. There is nothing I can do to make them better. I flip the visor up and drop the eyeliner back in my purse. “I thought she was smart,” I say in response to his not answering my question.

“What?” he asks with his narrow face twisted. “She is smart. Her doing it with me doesn’t stop her from being smart.”

I turn to face him because he has obviously forgotten who he’s talking to. “You don’t love her. And I know this because you haven’t said a word about her to me. What, is she going to Ohio State with you next year? Does she even know about the basketball scholarship? The answers are no and no. If you loved her, you would have told your secret without fear of her trying to play you. And since you sexed her up without being in love with her, she’s not that smart.”

I have never been in love, but I do enjoy sex. I figured out that it’s not important for me to be in love, but the boys have to be head over heels in love with me before they get close to having sex with me. I have a shoebox full of love letters and greeting cards all confessing undying love. Not to mention the constant supply of Nikes, Adidas, and Reeboks gym shoes from Walter. When guys are in love, they try harder to please. In my opinion, any girl who gives it up to a dude who is not in love with her isn’t smart.

Carlos blows an exasperated breath. “You don’t know everything, May.”

“About you I do.”

“You make me sick thinking that.”

“Whatever, but you know it’s true.”

I do know him well, and what he’s going to do next is reach into his pants pocket and pull out a roll of tropical fruit Lifesavers and suck on one all the way to school and not say another word unless I do.

We are about six blocks from school. I can make it without asking Carlos to make a bathroom stop.

When he pops the candy in his mouth I say, “So where are you taking her?”

He smacks on the Lifesaver deciding if he will answer.

“Oh, well, thanks for the ride to school anyway.”

He huffs again, and then he says, “My mama had four tickets to a play about Langston Hughes, and she gave them to me.”

He’s talking to me, but he’s not looking at me. His eyes are straight ahead, which is cool because he is driving, but I know his not looking at me is part of the attitude he’s trying to give me. I really couldn’t care less about him being upset. What has my interest now is the tickets. Samuel, my bus driver boyfriend, is in the Langston Hughes play.

“Four tickets? Who else is going with you?”. . .