Apple Brown Betty by Phillip Thomas Duck Page B

spot, she couldn’t help but think he was all the better for getting out of this when he did, morbid as that seemed.

SLAY
    â€œW here the backyard?” I ask my sister.
    Cydney taps me on the back. “There isn’t a backyard, stupid. This is an apartment tower.” Cydney always has been one for telling me stuff she thinks I don’t know.
    The building is tall and not too wide. Sign out front says, B…h A..s. George told us proudly when we pulled up in his getaway car that it would spell out Beach Arms if all the letters were there. Whatever. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. To me he looks like the dudes that kill Bruce Lee’s master in the movies I watch on Saturday afternoons. ’Cept George ain’t Chinese and he doesn’t talk so fast his mouth can’t keep up. I walk inside the building and Cydney follows.
    â€œHe dragged us out our house to come to this,” I say to Cydney. The light thing above in the lobby is broke, hanging, wires and whatnot sticking out. “Ain’t fair, I want a backyard.”
    â€œHe didn’t drag us out our house,” Cydney corrects me. She gets that look grown folks get when they tell us kids to leave the room. “Mama lost the place ’cause Daddy didn’t pay the bills right and he didn’t leave no money to bury him.”
    I swing back around facing her. “You shut up,” I tell her. I change what I said about George not talking fast before. He is a fast talker; he started spreading that lie before my daddy was dead hardly a month. I ain’t liked George since before my daddy died. He used to bring Daddy home after getting him sick watching basketball and then stand out on the porch whispering stuff to Mama. He’d take off his cap, too, and something ain’t right about that ’cause he won’t come inside or nothing.
    â€œWill not, it’s the truth,” Cydney says.
    I raise my hand to pass her a lick like my daddy did to Mama when she told lies, but I look up and see Mama coming through the lobby door. George is behind her, boxes in hand, wobbling along. I don’t know how you can go from one house with two little girls and a Missus George to another house with somebody else’s kids as easily as George did, but I’m sure Bruce Lee would frown on it.
    â€œYou two cutting up?” Mama asks.
    â€œNo,” I say. Cydney shuts down when grown folks question her. I know grown-ups ain’t nothing but little kids that done got big, so they don’t scare me as much as they do Cydney.
    â€œShammond, why don’t you help your Poppa George carry some of the boxes in.”
    â€œHe ain’t none of my poppa,” I say. I can feel Cydney shutting down beside me. I hold my chin up.
    â€œYou watch your mouth, Shammond,” Mama says to me.
    George puts his hand on Mama’s shoulder and smiles that smile them dudes give to Bruce Lee when they get off their first licks. Bruce wipes them smiles off their faces soon after. I wish I knew some of that hand-chop and foot-kick stuff for myself. I’d use it on George. “Let the boy go ahead and get used to the new place, run around and explore. I can handle these boxes,” George tells Mama.
    Mama looks at me. “Thank Poppa George for letting you play instead of work,” she says.
    I don’t thank him. Instead, I take Cydney by the wrist and walk her with me through the lobby and down the hall. Cydney’s older by two years but I’m more headstrong according to Mama. Headstrong—I think that means I’m smarter than Cydney.
    â€œYou’ve got to stop being like that with Pop G,” Cydney says. “He’s our daddy now.”
    I heard George tell Mama I was a thief last week when he noticed a few dollars missing from his wallet. Takes one to know one is all I can say to that. He stole Mama after all. “He ain’t our daddy,” I tell Cydney. Bruce Lee