I clear my throat, but she’s still zoned into the over-cooked ground beef. “Hey…”
Her arm jerks and she drops the spatula in the skillet, and it’s just like at the bookstore. She’s staring at me with those big cat-shaped eyes like I’m the one that hates her.
“Your mom said to have you fix me something to drink.” I nod my head to the opened bottle of Hennessy on the counter and I hear Pops talking about, “the lil’ chocolate drop with a mouth like her daddy’s.”
It makes me smile and makes her frown harder.
She flings her braids over her shoulder and reaches up to open a cabinet.
“You forgetting something?” I ask, pulling the spatula out of the grease. “You trying to burn the house down?”
She whips her head back to me and the glass in her hand tumbles in a slow, fumbling motion, but she recovers and catches it.
“Phat, might be time for you to cut the burgers off, baby. Mama can’t take all this smoke you got going in here!” CeCe yells from the table with her face buried in another album.
She’s lost in 2001 while Phat’s faltering in front of me because she’s a little lady that doesn’t know what to do with a man when her Mom’s not watching. She doesn’t know she’s supposed to brush her arm against mine and I’m supposed to promise her a good time when the Hennessy knocks CeCe on her ass. Instead, she’s a clumsy mess.
“I got you.” I nod toward the bottle again. “Just fix me something to sip on.”
I turn off the burner on the stove as she shuffles around and then sits a full glass of liquor next to me. It’s too much, but I don’t complain because thanks to CeCe, I’m searching for the one thing that always makes everything right.
I pick it up and after the first sip, my mouth leaks like a faucet.
“You got too much grease in the skillet,” I mutter, scooping the burnt patties onto the paper towel covered plate next to the stove. “Go open the window for Mom.”
The second sip makes those words come out because I want to watch her ass while she walks to the window and I don’t know how tonotcall CeCe by the name that comes to mind when I look at her.
Phat gives me a double-take like she wants to say something, but nothing comes out. Her ass sways on her way to the window and my dick is happy to see those juvenile panties and her ass’ natural curve at the bottom.
By the time I’m on my third sip, she’s back in the kitchen without me having to tell her to come back, and that makes me take a fourth.
I swallow. “Come here, let me show you something.”
The warmth from her body has my heart thumping and I need to stop sipping, but CeCe’s frail body won’t let that happen.
“Ground beef makes its own grease. You don’t need this.” I nudge the bottle of cooking oil away from the skillet. “And you don’t need to cook it so damn high. What you in a rush for?”
She doesn’t even give me a shrug, just a tilt of her head because she’s curious, like I said.
“Listen to him, Phat,” CeCe slurs, laughing. “That’s a good man right there. You ain’t got to move so fast all the time. Life move fast enough as it is.”
Those words make me guzzle what’s left in the glass.
CHAPTERFIVE
Lourdes
There’s a wet spot sitting in my panties. I felt it when Ace told me to fix him something to sip on and I saw it when I went to pee after Mama told me to fix his hamburger. It’s still there after Ace asks Mama to explain what Zydeco is. The more he drinks with Mama, the lower his eyes get and the more they keep drifting over to me. He’s doing that bullshit again—making my mouth dry, my skin itch, and my brain forget how to form words so I’ve been mute all throughout dinner and he probably thinks I’m touched.
I guess Mama was telling the truth about Marshall and Coach Williams. The dusty picture albums she made me pull off the shelf in the back of her closet yesterday confirmed it. Now I know the Angie Mama is always yapping about really is Coach Williams’ Angie—the same Angie whose death they announced on ESPN and the local news last year.
“So it’s like Cajun music?” Ace asks, swiping his tongue out to wet his bottom lip.
“Nah! That’s for white folks. Zydeco is for us.”
Mama’s drunk already. She was drunk before Ace pulled up for dinner and she was drunk this morning after breakfast. I found the eggs I scrambled for her in the bathroom trash while I refilled her pill planner and she threw up a mouthful of Paul Masson before I left for class.
“Chris Ardoin, J Paul Jr, Keith Frank.” She tosses her fingers out one by one and shimmies her shoulders.
