“Y’all hungry?” she asks, rubbing her red nose. “There’s chicken in here.”
“Did you eat any of it?” I ask, shuffling to the side as Smitty drags more pieces of the bed inside.
She stares at me, blinking. “It’s in here if you want it. If not, throw it in the dumpster on your way out. I still have to get a trash can.”
I take a deep breath and walk deeper into the apartment.
There’s only two doors. One leads into her bathroom, and the other leads into a bedroom with more shit she hates like beige low-pile carpet that has a mysterious brown stain in the middle of it.
I hesitate, then walk into her bedroom, dropping the side rail next to the stain.
Smitty walks in after me, holding a chicken wing and one of the wooden slats under his arm.
He takes a bite, then bunches his grey eyebrows together. “Nez!”
“What?”
“When the fuck did you buy this?”
“If you don’t like it, don’t eat it!”
“Ugh.” He swallows, shaking his head. “Tastes like it was cooked weeks ago. I hope you ain’t pay for this shit!”
“I didn’t! Your mammy did!”
“Lord, she throwed off,” he mumbles to himself. “I just know that shit runs on her mama’s side.”
If she wasn’t so mad at me, I’d laugh until I couldn’t breathe and she’d ask if we wanted her to cook us something instead. Then I’d give her my wallet so she could go to H-E-B and get us a pack of drumsticks she’d fry herself, but she doesn’t even offer Smitty a bottle of water to wash down the old chicken.
We only get two side rails attached to the headboard before she comes to stare at us from the doorway.
“You could’ve saved yourself the money and just apologized for how you acted the other day at Beatrice’s,” she says, leaning against the doorframe.
“I don’t know what you talking about,” I grumble, twisting my screwdriver into one of the screws.
“Typical.”
“What you talking in code for?”
“Ain’t nobody talking in code. See, this is the problem with you and Daddy.”
The tip of my screwdriver slips out of the screw’s head. “Fuck. Smit you brought the Robertson?”
He pats his back pocket. “Ah…I don’t know. It might be in the truck.”
I huff, tossing the screwdriver on the floor. “Shit won’t fit.”
“So you’re just gonna ignore me?” she asks.
“What the fuck is the problem, Arnez? You been begging me for a solid wood canopy bed for a year, and I got it. I drove across town, paid eight hundred dollars for a bedroom set and only left with the frame because this isexactlywhat you wanted. Now I’m here on my hands and knees putting it together for you whileyou talk to me like some motherfuckin peon because I ain’t want some random niggas delivering nothing to a place where you lay your head.”
I reach down for the screwdriver until I hear that familiar hiccup surge from the back of her throat.
I glance up at her pale, gaunt face.
“You can’t say it, can you?” she asks.
I pick up another slat and pull it against the side rail. “I ain’t arguing with you today.”
