cries herself to sleep, holding on to letters from that Triflin’ Heifer.
I go over to Zora’s CD player and put on some tunes. Ja’nae is the first one to start dancing. Her arms and legs are flying all over the place. Mai is singing loud with the music like she can really carry a tune. Zora’s foot is moving back and forth inside her sleeping bag. I’m watching all of them jammin’ to the music.
When the music stops, I go to Zora’s bathroom, stick my mouth underneath the faucet, and take a few gulps. “Y’all with me on this housecleaning thing?” I ask, wiping my mouth dry with the back of my hand.
They don’t even bother to answer me. Ja’nae just puts on another CD and starts throwing down again. The harder she dances, the more she sweats, and the sweeter the room gets. Ja’nae got this thing about smelling good. She says kids think all fat people stink. So she makes sure she smells good twenty-four/seven. She’s got cotton balls sprayed with perfume pinned to her bra strap, stuffed in her pocket, and sitting in her purse. Sometimes it’s too much, and the smell can make you wanna gag.
“The only one that makes any money working with you is you,” Mai says, knocking her skinny hips from side to side. Next thing I know, she’s at the mirror, frowning, going for her eyebrows with the tweezers. She’s pushing up the end of her brow with one finger and holding down her eyelid with another.
Mai’s brows are big, bushy, shiny things. They are beautiful, though, just like her slanty eyes, and long, thick lashes. Half the time, people can’t figure out what race she is. And they’re always telling her how exotic she looks, like she’s some kind of bird or plant that somebody shipped here from halfway cross the world.
While Mai picks at herself, Zora starts agreeing with her. “Raspberry, we work hard for you and don’t get nothing out the deal,” Zora says, going over to her drawer and pulling out three crumpled dollar bills. “See.” She throws balls of money across the room. One of ’em lands right in Ja’nae’s shoe. “Three lousy bucks for all my work.”
Ja’nae takes the cash and puts it into her pocket. Zora hunches her shoulders like three dollars ain’t no big deal. If somebody threw money at me, I wouldn’t be shrugging it off, even if it was a penny.
I can tell by how all three of them are looking that they ain’t gonna change their minds. They’re fed up with my stuff, same as Momma.
“Old folks would pay big-time for somebody to help ’em out,” I say.
“My mother didn’t raise no maid,” Zora says.
Mai screwed up her eyebrows, but she throws up her shoulders like she could care less. Now she’s squeezing a pimple, watching a white, wiggly worm-looking thing ooze out all over. She looks a mess standing there with her messed-up eyebrows and that worm sitting on her cheek.
“I gotta go,” Ja’nae says. “I gotta interview Ming for a class paper I’m writing.”
Nobody asks Ja’nae what the paper is about, ’cause we know she’s gonna tell us even if we don’t want to know.
“It’s for English class,” she says. “Mr. Knight says we should interview somebody we know. Get them to tell us something noteworthy about themselves.”
Mai turns around. She got her hands on her hips and her lips stuck out. Her cheek is as red as an apple.
When Zora sees Mai’s face, she turns away fast. I know she wanna bust out laughing. But she knows now ain’t the time. So she goes and lies down on the bed and shoves a fistful of cheese balls into her mouth.
Mai tells Ja’nae she better not go dragging her business into school. “I’m not playing,” Mai says, getting loud.
Next thing I know, Ja’nae is messing with Mai, telling her she and Ming should be proud of being mixed.
“I ain’t mixed. I’m black . . . like you,” Mai says, throwing her tweezers at Ja’nae.
I don’t know why Ja’nae even goes there.
She knows how Mai feels about her mixed