Who Asked You? Read Online Free Page A

went off. All he has to do now is press the remote to start it over. “I’m learning how to speak Spanish,” he said rather proudly when he was still able to speak in long sentences.
“Perry como usta senora?”
    “Can I get you anything else?”
    He flips the blanket up as his way of asking me to slide on under.
    “You really do think I’m Thelma, don’t you?” I say, and walk on out of the room. Dementia affects him only from the neck up. Sometimes I have come into the bedroom, like now, in broad daylight, and he’ll be lying there with a small tent in his lap and the stupidest grin on his face, which makes me want to gag. Sometimes I do it just to make that thing go down. But right now, I’ve got six or seven more pieces of chicken left to fry.
    I wrap a breast and thigh in aluminum foil for Mr. Jones and put them in a small lunch bag I keep for the boys’ snacks and set it on the table. I finally sit down, since I’ve been on my feet now for way too long. My right knee is throbbing but I don’t feel like taking a pill. I’m still sweating like a pig and I think I might have to break down and use that Sears card. Sometimes, like now, when it’s quiet, I like to sneak and take a few minutes to think about my life. What I’ve done wrong. What I’ve done right. And where I am now.
    Truth be told, I think I can rightly blame some of my kids’ problems on this neighborhood. Years ago it was nice here. White and black folks lived side by side, and just like it was on
Leave It to Beaver
and
Father Knows Best
, we borrowed a cup of sugar or a teaspoon of coffee from one another; our kids played together without ever hearing the words
nigger
or
honky
or
peckerwood
. We were all working-class families, proud of our small homes. And it showed. We had smooth driveways. Even some two-car garages. We had velvet grass in our front yards. Sprinkler and drip systems. Every color flower imaginable. Our hedges were all sculpted. The screens dirt-free. Windows vinegar-clean. Our front doors never had to be locked. But then in the early nineties, the drugs moved in. And the gangs. Which is when most of our homes started limping. The majority of white families started leaving. Kids had to play in the backyard unless a grown-up was sitting outside watching them. Lowriders drove slow and blasted rap music and dared you to complain. Folks began to look like they were always hesitating. We swept and hosed our sidewalks, picked up trash on the curb, and people prayed longer and harder but it didn’t seem to help. For most of their childhood, I couldn’t let my kids wear blue or red because our neighborhood didn’t belong to us anymore.

    “Where you at, Ma?”
    “I’m coming,” I say, and get up. I must’ve fallen asleep back here when I fell across the bed in Quentin’s old room because Lord knows I didn’t want to chance being seduced by Denzel Washington. I hear the boys running over that shag carpet and I walk out to greet them. Luther will be eight this year. Trinetta claimed she named him after Luther Vandross because she always had a crush on him. I don’t know who she named Ricky after, but since I doubt she ever slept with Rick James, I don’t think she had him in mind. He should be six. He was born with slight drug-baby issues and he takes medication that’s supposed to help him be able to do more of some things and less of others. He acts all right to me. He can be a little hyper sometimes, and quiet at others. I don’t trust those pills, and only time will tell how long they keep him on them. Trinetta never put much thought into how she was going to take care of her kids. She just had them. She has treated them like they were mistakes. Which is one of the reasons they’re over here so much.
    “Well, hello there, my little chocolate kisses,” I say, even though they’re two different shades of brown. Fudge and maple syrup. Both of them are cute in a peculiar way. Luther’s forehead is big and his head