The Perfect Place by Teresa E. Harris

jail.”
    â€œThat’s right, girl. Guess you’re not as simple as you look.”
    But I bet she’s as old as
she
looks. And maybe she’s a thief on top of everything else.
    â€œDid you get arrested for stealing?” I ask.
    â€œDepends on how you see thangs. See, Dot’s fool son was the mail boy back in the day, and he always used to come through here with this portable radio in his truck, blastin’ that be-pop.”
    â€œYou mean hip-hop?”
    â€œWho’s tellin’ this story, girl, you or me?” Great-Aunt Grace snaps. “So he used to come through blastin’ that be-pop, loud enough to make your dang ears bleed. I told him if you don’t cut it out when you come round my house, I’m gonna give you what for. He came around next day, still blastin’ that noise, but I was ready for him. Told him he had a flat rear tire. When he got out his truck to check, I reached in and took that dang radio.”
    â€œYou stole some kid’s radio?” Tiffany asks, incredulous.
    â€œThrew it on the ground and smashed it too.”
    I can just picture Great-Aunt Grace out by her mailbox, waiting to strike.
    â€œSo did you take Dot’s elephant, too?” I ask.
    â€œYeah, did you?” Tiffany chimes in.
    â€œDot’s a fool. This town is full of ’em. Don’t worry: Y’all will fit right in.”
    There are so many places Mom could’ve left us instead of with Great-Aunt Grace. An abandoned building, maybe, or the sewer. The Everglades. I’d rather take my chances with the gators and the snakes.

Ten
    W E walk for what feels like a month. When we reach the end of Great-Aunt Grace’s road, we turn down another and yet another, both almost identical to hers: narrow and flanked on either side by boxy, rundown houses. Soon we turn left and come to the street where Mom made her U-turn. Here there’s a gas station, a convenience store, and two signs that we haven’t completely fallen off the face of the earth: A few cars drive by and a woman passes us, jogging.
    â€œAre we almost there?” Tiffany says.
    â€œNo, and whinin’ ain’t gonna speed us up, so cut it out, girl.”
    Tiffany clamps her mouth shut and scowls. We keep on walking until we come to a stoplight. We cross the street and now we’re in what Great-Aunt Grace calls downtown Black Lake, which isn’t much more than a few blocks with small stores on either side of the street, languishing in the shade of faded awnings. DeGroat’s Dry Cleaning; W. T. Fine Arts and Prints; Pet and Purr.
    Great-Aunt Grace’s store is called Grace’s Goodies. We’re just stopping in front of its heavy metal-and-glass door beneath a worn burgundy awning when a voice calls out, “Morning, Ms. Washington.”
    A young man is climbing out of the driver’s side of a shiny black pickup truck. He’s broad-shouldered and the deep brown of milk chocolate. He has muscles on top of muscles and looks like he walked straight off the cover of one of Mom’s urban romance novels, the ones Dad asked her to stop reading in public.
    â€œMornin’, Byron,” Great-Aunt Grace says.
    â€œYou’re looking lovely as ever today,” Byron says.
    Great-Aunt Grace is sweaty and scowling. If that’s lovely, I’d hate to see what Byron considers unpleasant. “Aren’t you gonna introduce me to your pretty friends?”
    My face grows hot. Tiffany smiles up at him. She loves anyone who calls her pretty.
    â€œNot friends,” Great-Aunt Grace says, setting her cooler down. “Family.”
    â€œWell, they got names?”
    Before Great-Aunt Grace can answer, a girl comes bursting out of the store two doors down from Grace’s Goodies, carrying a greasy brown paper bag. She’s wearing the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen and a tank top thinner than one-ply toilet paper.
    Byron holds his hand out for the