Who Asked You? Read Online Free Page B

on the square side, but I can tell he’s going to grow into those looks one day. Ricky’s features all coincide with one another but he always looks like he’s thinking about something.
    “Hi, Grandma,” Luther says, and he almost makes me lose my balance when he gives me a long hug. His arms don’t fit around my hips. Ricky just waves, sits down on the couch, and starts looking for the remote between the cushions. He keeps busy.
    “Hey, Ma,” Trinetta says, and gives me a phony kiss on the cheek. “So, you got what we discussed?” She sounds just like a drug addict. She doesn’t sit, which means she’s either high or in a hurry or both. That’s why I decide to make her ass wait. I wish she would cut those damn dreadlocks off. They look like they need to be shampooed. I used to think people wore them because they had a sense of pride, being black and all, but for some, like my daughter, it’s obvious that it’s just another hairstyle. Trinetta is also disappearing. I can see her collarbone, and even though she’s brown like me, her skin is so thin I can see green veins running up and down her arms like branches on a winter tree.
    “Tell me, what kind of job is it this time?”
    “It’s a sales position.”
    She can lie on a dime. But I am not in the mood for watching her act antsy so I go ahead and reach inside my purse and hand her some folded bills I keep hidden for emergencies.
    “Thanks,” she says, and stuffs them in her bra. “And that’s all I can tell you right now. I’ve already started studying for the test.”
    “Tell me a lie I can believe, Trinetta.”
    “I ain’t—I’m not—lying this time, Ma. Cut me a little slack, would you?”
    “Where’s Ricky’s medication?”
    “Luther, you got Ricky’s meds in your backpack like you supposed to have?”
    “Yep!” he yells from the bathroom.
    “Why didn’t you bring some clean clothes for them?”
    “I can drop some off later.”
    “And should I hold my breath?”
    “I thought they had enough stuff over here.”
    “Is your cell phone working?”
    “It’ll be back on tomorrow.”
    “I would really like to ask you a lot of things, but I’m not even going to bother.”
    “Good,” Trinetta says. “’Cause I’m really not in the mood for a lecture. Is he in his usual spot?”
    “
He
is.”
    I don’t know why she has such a hard time calling him Daddy and I’m sick of asking. She walks over and sticks her head inside the doorway. “Hey there, Mr. Butler,” she says, but he doesn’t answer.
    “I’ll be glad when you put him in one of those places,” she says, then walks into the kitchen, looks at the chicken, and comes back empty-handed. “You wasting perfectly good money on that
nurse
who look more like a ho if you ask me, and you already said the doctor is only giving him two years at most, so what’s the point?”
    “You need to mind your own business,” I say as she goes into the bathroom. It’s no wonder these kids talk the way they do. I turn my attention to them. Luther is now sitting next to Ricky on the sofa like they’re little strangers waiting for a train. I look above their heads. That sofa is still ugly. It’s a shade of gold I’ve never seen anywhere else. Except for Gulden’s mustard. The glass coffee table has been cracked about six years and even has a broken leg. The beige shag carpet is almost insulting to walk on these days. And those burgundy brocade drapes with the sheer nylon curtains behind them aren’t fooling anybody. This is no castle. I don’t know why the fake artwork I bought at the swap meet suddenly looks fake. Now my grandsons look like they’re sitting inside an old photograph because everything in this living room feels wrong. Except them. I wish there was a way I could save them from their mama.
    But I can’t. She may have some bad habits, but she doesn’t hit them. They’re well fed. And always clean. But that’s about it. Which is precisely why I go get them every