Page 594 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

For a moment, Celie watches it burn.

Then she turns to me.

“What’d you bring?”

I turn, reaching behind me,

then side-eye her as I wave the papers.

“The Baby Contract.”

Celie’s jaw drops, eyes turn into plates.

“Shut the FUCK up right now.”

Her hands shoot into the air with a scream,

and then her hands fly to her mouth,

and she shouts into the skyline,

“ANDREW HARDING,

“THIS PUSSY PICKED YOU!

“DON’T FUCK IT UP!”

My smile burns my cheeks,

and I lean forward to feed the fire⁠—

Until her arm shoots out, stopping me.

“Whoa, hold up⁠—”

I freeze mid-drop.

“We are gathered here today to burn this evil ass document.”

“Celie,” I laugh,

but she continues,

finger pointing,

“Let the record show: my bitch’s coochie is free. And by the power vested in me—Bronx’s baddest—I declare this contract dead as fuuuuuhck.”

She looks at me, gestures to the fire.

“You may throw it in.”

But my hand freezes over the flames,

the fire heating my face,

the last ten years flashing in my mind,

the funerals,