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  One dude howled when I got done singin' my soulful song, and that made me so happy I sung them one of my ragin' songs, and man, I got feelin' hot and steamy after that one. I got shakin' it, and all them in the band was touching me here, there, and everywhere, and passing me dope and I just kept shakin' it and drawing on the dope like I been doin' it for years, and I got feelin' better 'n' better. They said I had a powerful voice that gonna bring the house down like a earthquake. They gave me a beer and I drunk it, sure, like I always drink beer when I sing. I heard beer took getting used to, but I liked it straight away. It were like when I been sucking on my bread ball too long before I chewed it down and swallowed it. It had a bready kind of taste, so I had me another beer and sang with this dude who tucked his chin way in when he sung. I tucked my chin in, too, and got myself a cramp in my neck, so I didn't do that no more.

  The singin' and jammin' was more fun than I ever had in my life. Dudes was coming up to me and playing in my ear and the lights from the ceiling flashed gold off the trumpets and gold off the sax—all those lights, all the sounds, my singin', the beer, the dope, dudes touchin' and rabbin' me, more singin', more beer, lots of great riffs back and forth from the drums to the sax to the keyboard—and me, I'm hot. I'm so hot I'm burnin' up the place. My throat's on fire, my body's lit, and I'm dancin' 'round the room and rubbing myself up on Jaz, then movin' and groovin' with Victor from the gas station, then moving back to center to sing like I never sung before.

  We jammed all night, and when Jimmy left, round 'bout two in the morning, someone turned down the lights and brought out some big cookies, as big as my hand. Someone else passed round cocaine powder on a plate, and someone else brought out whiskey and more beer and cola and set it on a table with the cookies. Well, I tried this, and I tried that, all 'cept for the heroin someone were shootin' up his veins, then I puked in the toilet and lay on the floor. When they started playin' again, I stayed layin' there and let the sound come up at me through the floor, beating against my back—pound, pound, pound—like the drum hammer was beating the rhythms on my body and my heart were beating with the drums and the room were swirling and red lights was flashing till I got laughing, laughing hard till I cried. Then, don't know what come over me, but I got screaming. I screamed my lungs raw. Someone got down on the floor and put his hand on my mouth to stop my screaming. He got down on top of me to stop my screaming. He come down on top of me, and I stopped screaming. And I wanted what he give me, every bit of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I WOKE UP CLOSE to noon, squinting in the sunlight coming through the two windows. I sat up and saw Jaz standing over me, with my clothes in his hands. He handed them to me and I put them on, staying under the blanket I had over me till I finished dressing. When I moved, I could feel my every bone and muscle were deep sore, and my head so tender, it felt like it made of glass and been shattered with a hammer.

  Jaz bent over and reached for my hand. He helped me up and we tiptoed on out of the sour-smelling room filled with all the sleeping bodies. I looked back at the spot where I were sleeping and saw the body that been laying next to me. Couldn't see his face. Couldn't see nothin' but a lumpy, body-filled blanket.

  "We need some coffee," Jaz said, when we got to His Girl, Shirl.

  "Do we?" I said. I felt so sick, didn't want nothin' in me—nothin'!

  He opened the door for me and I said I needed to lay down. He took out my backpack and laundry bag and let me crawl in the back. I curled up in a tight fist, hugging my knees close and hard, and closed my eyes to keep the sun from hurting them.

  Jaz drove real slow for me and said he were sorry 'bout my hangover. He said, "Some wild night, huh?" And he said it like he weren't sure.

  I said, "Don't remember nothin' 'bout last night." My voice were flat soundin', no music in it.

  "You don't remember?" His voice still sounded unsure.

  "I said I don't remember nothin'. Don't remember nothin' at all, so don't be talkin' 'bout it. Just get me that coffee."

  I squinted up at him, at the back of his head, and I seen that his head be flat in the back. It look like he got no skull at all back there, just a hard plate covered in skin and hair. Seeing it flat like that, seeing his thick neck rising straight up out of his shirt, same width as his head, like his neck and the back of his head be one and the same thing, made me want to puke. I quick sat up and told him to stop the car 'cause I gotta puke.

  I just made it out the door in time. Jaz waited in the car for me, and I were glad he didn't come out to hold my head or nothing or I woulda puked more.

  I were finally ready to get back in the car, but then we heard a police car siren and Jaz said, "Shit!" and the car pulled up behind him with its lights flashing.

  I stayed standing at the side of the road, kinda bent over at the waist, not feeling like it safe yet to stand straight.

  The policeman got out his car and strut over to Shirl, with Jaz sittin' inside. He were 'bout to speak, then he saw me and he lifted his head and said, "You Leshaya?"

  I hugged myself like I were feeling cold, even though the day were humid hot, and said, 'Yes, sir, I be Leshaya. Why you want to know?"

  He looked down and pulled something outta his back pocket. He brung it round and read something off it.

  "Got some people looking for you. You know the Jameses?"

  "Yeah, I know 'em. Why they lookin' for me?"

  "They claim you're a runaway. That right?"

  I looked off to my right, looking out at the blue day, feeling the hot sun on my head like it a knife cutting into the deep ache there. I didn't wanna deal with no fool cop. I didn't wanna face them Jameses, neither. I just wanted to feel that burning sun. Didn't want nothin' but the sun.

  I didn't answer the cop, so he ducked his head into the window and said to Jaz, "You'd better have a good reason you're up here with this child. I'm gonna have to take the both of you in."

  Jaz whipped his head round at me, giving me his fiercest look, then beat his hand on the horn like he wished it be my face.

  Didn't matter if he were angry at me. Didn't matter if he found out how old I were. Didn't matter what that flat head thought no more. I lifted my head and stared wide-eyed straight into the sun and let it burn and burn and burn.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  WE GOT EVERYTHING settled at the police station fast enough 'cause Mr. James were there, and Jaz's mama come. Jaz had left a note telling her he gonna take me up to the Shoals, so that kept him from being a kidnapper. He 'bout freaked when he found out I were still a week away from bein' thirteen years old. His deep-in-his-head eyes popped wide open for that bit a news, and he kept swearing, and his mama kept swatting his head 'cause he kept swearing.

  Mr. James took me home with him, and all he would say to me were, "Everything's going to be okay. It's going to be all right." I didn't think he were saying it for me as much as for his own self. It were like he needin' to pat hisself on the head over and over. Man, he looked a wreck.

  I stayed at the Jameses' house two days. Didn't have to go to school or nothin'. They didn't talk to me much 'cause they was leaving all the talking for the social worker who were gonna come out to see me, but when they did talk, it weren't natural and happy talk. They was real careful with me and most of the time left me alone, even Harmon. All Harmon would say to me were, "You don't have a clue what we've all been going through, do you? Why do you have to screw things up all the time?"

  I didn't know why I always screwed up, but I figured Harmon would understand that, but he didn't. He were on his parents' side. I were wrong and they was right. I were bad and they was good. I were mean and they was nice. And thing was, the more he thought I were mean, the meaner I felt inside myself. I didn't want to feel mean. I wanted to feel what I felt when I snuggled up to Jaz down by the river, and when that dude in Jimmy's band climbed on me to stop me screamin'. I wanted Harmon to hug me the way he used to at Patsy and Pete's. I wanted him to love me most again. So my last night t
here, I tried to get him to love me again. Soon as I figured everybody be asleep, I snuck into Harmon's room and climbed into his bed.

  He had a panic attack when he woke up and found me next to him, especially when I brung his hand onto me and he find I got nothin' on. He sprung from his bed and told me I'd better get on outta his room fast before someone come in and find us.

  I said I didn't care if they did, and I asked, didn't he want to make love to me?

  Harmon didn't answer that, 'cause he were havin' a fit 'cause I were talkin' so loud.

  "Shh, you're going to wake someone. Now, get out of my bed, Leshaya. Go on."

  I got out real slow like I way tired and I let him see my body.

  He turned away when he saw it and said, "Man, Leshaya, what's got into you?"

  "Not you, that's for sure," I said, and I felt real mean inside me again. "Thanks for nothin'."

  I left his room but I left my panties behind, in his bed, far under the covers where the maid gonna find it when she change his sheets.

  NEXT DAY, THE SOCIAL WORKER lady with the piggy nose come and take me away. All the Jameses was glad to see me go, most of all Harmon.

  I got took to some backcountry place to live with a lady named Joy Victoria. She were the best-named person I ever met, 'cause she smiled all the time. She were white and had brown hair and dimples in her cheeks and happy-snappy blue eyes and a square nose. She weren't skinny and she weren't fat, neither—just average. But all the time she happy and her voice like a song or a chirpy singing bird.

  First thing she did when I come up to her door were fling it open and hug me like she knew me but hadn't seen me in a long time and missed me. Didn't care if she hugged me. I hugged her back like she my old friend, but I didn't feel nothin' inside. She told me to come in, and I did, and I looked round the place. Her house be like a Hansel-and-Gretel house, not with candy all over it but with little glass things—glass dogs and giraffes and frogs and ladies in hill skirts and flowers in their hands, and glass flowers in baskets and tied with glass bows and every kind of little glass thing. Most of them was painted but some was clear glass, and they sat in the windows and shined and gleamed, and the house felt like a happy house, a shining, singing house, so I were glad to be left with Joy Victoria.

  She said I didn't have to call her mama. I could just call her Joy, so I did. Joy didn't take but one foster kid at a time, and she only took girls 'cause she only had one bedroom to share and it were small. The house were way out in the middle of nowhere, and Joy said she could take me to school, or I could be homeschooled 'cause she were qualified to teach all subjects up through senior in high school.

  I said I didn't care, and she said that she would teach me, then, 'cause it were a long way to the school.

  Joy had all kinds of talents. She been a nurse once, and a teacher, and even a policewoman. She ran a crafts business on weekends and a home computer business during the week She had some goats outside, and inside, taking up all the spaces that don't have glass, were a big weaving loom and a spinning wheel and colors and colors of yarns and thick threads, and she did weaving and knitting and spinning and went round to fairs on the weekends, selling her stuff.

  While I lived with her, I come with her to the fairs and ate myself some cotton candy and hot dogs and stared at all the people pickin' up stuff, then puttin' it back down again, not buying nothin'. Were lots of cranky kids at them fairs, too, no matter how full of sweets and lemonade their parents stuffed them.

  Joy said she could teach me how to weave and knit, but I weren't interested. I told her I just be interested in singin' 'cause I had a big talent for that and weren't good with my hands.

  Even though I wouldn't do knitting, me and Joy settled in real good. She said if I worked fast, I could be done with my schoolwork before lunch and have the whole rest of the day to do what I wanted. I did just that, school in the morning and singing to the trees and the goats all afternoon. And the work were easy 'cause she started me back a ways, since she said I were behind. Didn't mind doin' the work, neither. I just read stuff and wrote stuff in notebooks, and Joy come and check on me. She always right behind me, 'cause she weaving or spinning her yarn in the mornings, right there in the same room. She played music CDs while we worked, and it were Mozart music and Bach and Handel. Didn't mind 'cause it didn't have no words to bother me. I played her my tapes of the ladies, and she said we could listen to them every night with our dinner.

  Joy let me eat all the bread balls I wanted till she found me yakkin' my food back up in her toilet. Then she thought maybe were the bread balls making me sick, so she said I'd better slow down with them. I did but I still got sick, and after a few days of that, Joy said I had to go to a doctor.

  We had to drive a long way back to Tuscaloosa to see the doctor. Found out I were pregnant I knew I were, anyway. I knew it the morning after that jam session in Muscle Shoals that I were pregnant, 'cause back in school when we learned 'bout how easy it were to get pregnant and how you could get pregnant the very first time you had sex, I knew that's the way it would be with me. So I didn't mind livin' for a while off in the woods with Joy, at least till I had the baby, then me and the baby could go on to New York City, where I for sure could become a famous singer.

  Joy asked me, riding in the car on the way home again, did I know who the father be, and I said yes, even though I didn't I couldn't remember what he looked like or even if he be black or white. That's when I figured out that my mama Linda always made up stories 'bout my daddy 'cause she didn't know. Just like me, she didn't know who the father really be. I decided right then that I were gonna give my baby a daddy and stick with my story. Weren't gonna change it every time I had a whim, like Mama.

  After Joy found out I were pregnant, her smile at me got phony-lookin', but she still hugged me lots and said, "Poor, poor Leshaya," over and over.

  But I didn't feel so poor. I wanted to have the baby. I were gonna do it right and love it all the time and not leave it nowhere or kidnap it or make it feel mean. I were gonna take it everywhere so it could keep me company, and I wouldn't never feel lonely or have that longing sick feeling in me no more. I were gonna love the baby and it were gonna love me back. A baby always loves its mama.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I LIVED WITH JOY till the baby come, and she taught me lots about how to feed and clean a baby and how to hold it and everything else a mama should know, even though every time the social worker come to visit I were told I would have to give the baby away for adoption after it got born. I didn't say nothin' to the social worker 'cause I knew she didn't like me, anyway. She always looked at me like I be 'bout to snatch her hands off her arms, but I told Joy weren't no way I would let my baby live in foster homes and go roamin' round lost. No way I gonna let that lady with the pig nose take my baby.

  Joy just smiled and said, "We'll see. That's a long way off from now." But I didn't trust her. She were showin' me how to take care of the baby and all, but she were agreeing with the social worker behind my back, and the two of them was planning on snatching it up soon as they could. I kept my eyes on Joy all the time, and I seen her making calls to that social worker and whispering stuff to her, too.

  I had me a baby shower before I give birth. That's what Joy called it, but were more like a birthday celebration, really. I didn't mind. Joy made me a strawberry frosting cake and knitted me a red sweater, with pockets and a hood, and named a newborn goat Leshaya after me. I were afraid of the goats. I sang to them, but I didn't never touch them till Leshaya be born. Then I touched her and held her and pretended she my baby, and I sung her songs I made up that I knew was good. I were gonna be a really great mama, I could tell.

  While I waited for my baby to come, I made secret plans for me and the baby to go to New York City, and counted up the money I took from Daddy Mitch's shoe box. Musta been ten thousand in there when I first took it, 'cause what I had left were $9,752.84! Every night I pulled my money from a pair of pants I never wore no more an
d counted it up. Then I wrapped the money back in the pants and stuffed it in my laundry bag and hid it away under my bed. Joy never did go inspecting my things the way Mama Shell sometimes did, so it were always just like I left it.

  I made plans and got fat, and my tits turned to big heavy milk balloons, and my legs got swolled up, so when I did my schoolwork I kept my feet up on a chair. The rest of the day I were out walking round 'cause Joy said moving kept things circulating better, and Lord, I got restless doin' nothin' much 'cept waiting for that baby.

  Joy took me to see the doctor regular, and he give me vitamin pills and told me to drink lots of milk and eat lots of fruits and vegetables, but all I wanted to eat were pizza. I wanted pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  First time I felt the baby kick, I wanted to kick it back 'cause it weren't funny at all. It made my stomach cramp. Joy said the cramping were gas, but I knew it be the baby and I couldn't wait till it come out of me.

  Nine months come and go, and I so fat I can't walk round no more, and I don't want to eat or plan or do schoolwork or count my money or play with Little Kiddie-Leshaya. I just wanted the baby out! I yelled at Joy all the time and told her that her smiling at me when I be angry at her were pissin' me off good. Joy hugged me and asked me to sing her a song, but I didn't even want to do that no more. I told her if she wanted to hear a song, she could sing it herself, and she did.

  Her voice were high and light and pretty. Her voice were real pretty, and I told her to stop singing, 'cause it made my head hurt. She didn't sing again, but it didn't help my head none. I could hear her voice singing in my head. I tried my own singing to get rid of her sound, but it didn't work. Her voice were real pretty, and she never used it. She sat in her knicky-knacky living room, weaving and tapping at her computer and correcting my stupid schoolwork, when she could be singing somewhere like New York City. She made me mad to think about it, and I got even more cranky, and good thing I did, 'cause one day when I were pitching a fit cause my legs hurt and my stomach were feeling awful and I were thinking 'bout Joy with the pretty voice not singing in New York and how I weren't gonna waste my talents, my water broke, and Joy said my baby gonna come soon.