My smart ass wasn’t gonna have none of that, so I said, “Whatchu gonna do about it?” And Shauna came down those steps like a dog on the hunt, right up to me with a snarl. I was still skinny in every way, didn’t have any meat on my bones to pound Shauna, who was all soft belly and hips that cradled it like they already knew she’d be with child in a matter of years.
Alé was circling back around to stand by me. Even her square shoulders could not compete with Shauna. It isn’t that Shauna was that tall or nothing; she simply had outgrown the bodies we were still shedding. She was on to the next one, titties that spilled out her tank top and bounced when she walked—strutted—in beat-up sneakers that everyone told her she best replace. Shauna always said she’d rather be barefoot, but her auntie wouldn’t let her leave the house like that. Eventually, she gave up and let one of the boys swooning over her buy her some crisp new shoes you could tell she never liked.
The day we met, Shauna was ready to fight. I didn’t even know how to throw a real punch and Alé didn’t believe in fighting nobody, just standing by and loving me. Shauna was starting to talk shit when the boys arrived on their bikes. We thought they were just passing through, about ten of them, older than us by a couple years maybe. Then one of them grabbed my ass and Shauna saw it coming, pushed past me real quick, lifted her leg, thigh shaking, muscle bulging, and kicked. Knocked the boy who grabbed my ass right off his bike.
The other ones had started circling, but Shauna’s blow made them flee, tires squealing. The prelude to our fistfight dissipated into her huffing and me in complete awe, telling her, “Thanks.”
“Don’t worry about it.” She turned around and walked back to her porch, where her little sister sat watching like nothing happened. Shauna sat behind her sister again and resumed the twists. Alé and I kept skating, went around the block a couple times, always returning to the porch, where we’d slow down and stare. Third or fourth time around and Shauna called out to us, “If y’all wanna watch, might as well sit down and have a Coke.”
We watched Shauna twist every hair on her sister’s head, sipping sodas and mesmerized. By the time Shauna got pregnant at seventeen and dropped out, she didn’t seem like such a wonder anymore. Just another one of us trying to make it out here. Her auntie married some guy, moved to West Oakland, and didn’t want her to come, baby and all. She moved in with Cole and his mama and every fantasy she ever had turned into moans and now we’re sitting in a car running from things you can’t run from and trying to forget that we were just babies who wanted to skate and walk around without no shoes.
“I don’t know,” I say, even though I do. Even though it all seems so clear, like one long road that was always gonna end up here. “Sometimes we all do what we gotta do for the people we gotta do it for.” I lean over to look back at the car seat, mirror eyes. “Like you said, you got a child.”
Shauna wipes her last tear and starts the car again. She doesn’t respond and she don’t need to. We both know. It’s another two minutes and we’re pulling up at Cole’s, my head still pulsing. I tell Shauna we gotta hurry in, can’t be out here too long, and she grabs her daughter from the backseat and slides her onto her hip. We head into the house quickly, right down to the basement. It looks like Shauna has stopped trying to clean it because toys and Cole’s dirty clothes are all thrown on the floor. Part of me wants to pick them up, but it also feels so fitting, like it would be wrong for the room to be crisp and spotless when nothing else is.
You can hear the beat from outside the studio door. “Cole’s out but he’ll be back soon. Won’t stop you if you feel like kicking both they asses,” Shauna calls to me. She’s on the couch bouncing her baby in her lap and smiling. Not with her teeth, but with the slope of her shoulders. I keep walking, swing the door open. Marcus isn’t standing in the recording booth like usual, but the music is blasting out. He’s the only one in the room, sitting on the floor with his eyes closed, wringing his hands.
“Marcus?”
I step over him to shut the music off on the soundboard and the room goes silent. I crouch beside him. He shakes his head and opens his eyes, bloodshot and flooding.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“Like you give a shit,” he spits, and I wonder if I should leave, let him be the same selfish person he’s been since he gave up on me.
Then he sighs and whispers, “Sorry.”