Читать книгу The Pink House - Trish MacEnulty - Страница 20

From the Journal of Nicole Parks

Every year on the compound there is a yearly review by the Department of Corrections. Everyone got off their regular job assignments and had to paint and clean from sun up to sundown. Then some of us got pulled off duty to load up TVs from the offices and pile them into a bus. I couldn’t believe it when I found out the staff was going to hide the TVs off in the woods. I guess they didn’t want it known that they were busy watching soap operas instead of doing their jobs.

It was about this time that Viola showed me a picture of her brother, Junebug. There wasn’t nothing subtle about it, though she tried to play it off.

“Don’t you think he’s a fine looking man?” Viola asked me. I was doing some ironing in the dayroom.

I had to concede that he wasn’t hard to look at. He had a red tone to his skin and deep eyes. He was wearing a thick gold chain around his neck but not all that flash that them ghetto thugs think they have to wear.

“He’s a hard worker, too, girl,” Viola said.

Daffy strolled up and stuck out her long neck so she could see the picture.

“What kind of car do he drive? Hmm?” she asked.

“Um, a Ford Taurus, I think,” Viola said. “It’s blue.”

“A Taurus?” Daffy opened her eyes wide like she was impressed when I knew she was making fun of Viola’s brother, so I had to stick up for him a little bit even though I didn’t know the man.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of car a man drives. What matters is how he treats you.” I pressed down hard on the iron, thinking that Antwan had treated me so good all the way up to the moment he let me do his time for him. And it occurred to me I didn’t know jack about the way a man ought to treat a woman. I used to think my daddy wasn’t good to Momma. He didn’t spoil her and all like that. I’m not even sure what broke them up. On the other hand, I could remember coming into the kitchen and seeing them cooking together – Daddy making stew and Momma cooking greens and biscuits. And there was something about the way they moved about the kitchen together, stepping around each other in constant motion, never getting in each other’s way. It looked like they were doing a dance together. Maybe they had more going on than I realized as a fourteen-year-old girl.

Daffy walked out of the room, and later in the cafeteria, she said to me, “Child, please. What is Viola thinking? Like you would dump Antwan for her chump of her brother.”

I just crossed my arms and nodded. I had gotten a letter from Antwan just that day full of his sweet sexy words (though he couldn’t spell worth a damn). And he had put fifty dollars in my bank, which was nothing out of his bankroll, but meant a lot to me being locked up.

But that night, don’t you know, as I was standing with my head stuck in my locker, I overheard Daffy telling Viola that her brother Junebug could write to her—Daffy, that is—if he wanted to. And poor Viola started stammering something. I just held in my laughter and pretended like I didn’t hear a thing.