“No, the hell we don’t,” Val complained, twisting away. “Monty, don’t you dare leave! I invited you here! Not this crazy fool!”
It was too late. Monty from the club was already two-stepping his way back to his car and jumping inside.
“Sorry! Tonight’s not the night!” he said, slamming his door closed and turning on the ignition in a rush. He backed out of the driveway like the house was about to explode.
In all of her anger, Val actually was so pissed that she stopped struggling under Ernest’s heavy arm.
“Look what you did,” she said, like this was their routine.
“Nigga wasn’t shit, anyway,” Ernest said, waving at Monty. “Car wasn’t even his.”
“How do you know that?”
“It had sorority tags on it. You didn’t notice that?”
“Hmm . . .” Val squinted to see a sorority plate right on the front of the car before Monty spun out into the street and sped off.
Ernest yawned dramatically. “I’m tired. Let’s go inside and go to bed,” he said casually.
“Bed? What? You’re about to go to jail. I’m calling the police,” Val argued again.
“No, you ain’t.” Ernest turned Val and her unused cell phone toward him and stepped up to her. “You don’t want to make that call. If you wanted to, you would’ve done it already. You’re the kind of woman who does exactly what she wants to do.”
“You don’t know me,” Val said, but she was definitely putting the phone back into her purse.
“Maybe not. But I do like you.” Ernest smiled. “And I really did want to see you tonight.”
“Well, the night is over.” Val rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. “You are too late.”
Ernest looked up at the sky. “Moon’s still out. Sun won’t be up for a few hours.” He looked back at Val so softly. “Can I spend those hours with you?”
“Doing what?” Val’s eye-rolling and frowning was replaced with a suspicious blush.
“Sleeping.”
“Sleeping?” She looked at him like he was crazy. “That’s all you want to do?”
“Yes. I want to chat. And lie behind you and go to sleep. That’s what I want to do. That’s all I want to do.” Ernest placed both of his large hands over Val’s shoulders. “Will you let me?”
Chapter 5
Tyrian had observed two very important things about Thirjane Jackson since she showed up at his summer camp crying and saying he needed to come and spend another night at her house because his mother Kerry had “gotten herself in some trouble.” First, his grandmother never did anything without first having a sip of her “special drink” that she kept in the silver bottle in her pocketbook. A trip to the grocery store, church, the doctor, tee off, or soccer practice—from the backseat of the car, he watched his grandmother take a few sips of her drink, sometimes say a little prayer or curse to herself while gripping the steering wheel, and then sliding the silver bottle back into her pocketbook before they made a move.
This didn’t bother Tyrian much. Grandma was sometimes more funny and less mean after having the sips. The smart seven-year-old already knew it was alcohol, but didn’t have the heart to tell her after she lied and said it was her “medication.” She’d smile more and order him around less and not say so many mean things about Kerry. But still, sometimes things wouldn’t go so well. She’d get really quiet and look tired in her eyes. And one day, when she was late picking him up from school and drove so far over the yellow line in the middle of the street a white man in a truck coming toward them gave them the middle finger, she just pulled over and started crying. He asked what was wrong. Why she was so sad. She hollered at him. Yelled. Screamed. Told him not to say another word and never to bring up what had just happened again. Her old-lady blush and foundation making waves down her wrinkled cheeks beneath streaming tears, she looked at him in the rearview mirror and made him swear, “Grandma’s business is Grandma’s business.”
And that little verbal contract was the main motto of the second thing he’d observed: Grandma had a lot of business. Almost every day, sometimes twice in an hour, Tyrian would be sworn into these little secrecies. And sometimes they were li
ttle things or funny things. Like that Grandma’s teeth weren’t real. And that she almost always cheated at Pokeno when they played on Saturday night. And that she hated the pastor’s wife at church. And when she went up front during the collection, the envelope she put in the basket was always empty. “All that money First Lady be spending on them tacky-ass Fashion Fair dresses she wears every Sunday, I’ll be damned if I give a dime to this church,” she’d said one day after church before turning to Tyrian and adding, “And don’t you tell anyone what I said. Grandma’s business is—” Tyrian had heard this so many times he cut in with the predicate: “Grandma’s business.”
As thin as the promises from a seven-year-old could be, Tyrian honestly intended to keep his promise to Grandma Janie. But there was one bit of business she was conducting that he was actually finding hard to keep secret. The bit was so juicy, so bold, that Tyrian promised himself that as soon as he got the chance he’d share the information with the only person who would care: his mother. As soon as he got her alone, he’d put his hand to his mother’s ear and whisper so low that no one else would know: “Grandma’s got a boyfriend.”
Well, Tyrian wasn’t exactly sure if the man was his grandmother’s boyfriend. She’d never said he was and Tyrian never saw them kiss, but that was the only reason he could develop to explain why his Grandma Janie was so adamant that he tell no one, absolutely no one, about the white man with the black hat who met them at the park sometimes and sat on the bench to talk to his grandmother as he played on the jungle gym.
One afternoon, on a Thursday after school when Grandma Janie took Tyrian to the park, he decided to conduct an experiment when her boyfriend was walking toward their bench and Grandma Janie began to shoo Tyrian away. The precocious little one decided to record their conversation on the one device his grandmother would never suspect—his iPad. He’d seen it done on one of the animated pet-detective shows he’d watched on the Disney Channel. Sadie the Dog had launched a full investigation to discover where her owners kept her bacon treats. One night, she set up an iPad surveillance unit beside her crate in the kitchen and in the morning the video was filled with clues. Tyrian laughed innocently at the idea of being like Sadie the Dog, collecting clues about his grandmother’s new boyfriend. He wouldn’t tell his grandmother, of course. But he would tell his mother. As soon as they were alone, he’d whisper in her ear everything that was said and they’d laugh and laugh and laugh at Grandma’s silly business.
“You go on and play, boy,” Thirjane said sternly when the man was getting closer to her and Tyrian on a bench beside the playground. “Go on and play and don’t come back over here talking about you’re bored. Don’t come back until I tell you to. You hear me?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tyrian agreed. He handed her the iPad he’d been playing a game on and smiled without showing his gap teeth—the way she’d taught him to. “Can you hold my iPad for me?”