Free Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones Page A

pointed to a dark-skinned man with a high forehead. “That’s Kwame Nkrumah, who my little brother is named after.”
    “Who is he?”
    “An African president. My daddy is real y into Africa. Presidents especial y.” She sat in a leather desk chair and swiveled around. “Africa, Africa, Africa.”
    “What about your mother? I mean your real mother. Is she like that, too?”
    Ronalda’s mouth turned up at the corner and she mashed her lips together before she spoke. “My mother is dead. I don’t want to talk about it.”
    “I’m sorry,” I said, even though Ronalda didn’t sound exactly sad. It was more like she was angry with me for mentioning it.
    “Can you show me around some more?” I asked.
    She opened another room, the same size as her father’s study, but it was nearly empty. There were bookcases instal ed, but only one shelf held any books. There was a desk, but it wasn’t cluttered with papers. In the corner stood an electric belt exerciser. My mother had one of those, too. You turned it on and it would jiggle the fat off of you.
    “This is my stepmother’s office,” Ronalda said. “We can hang out in here.”
    “What do you cal her?”
    “My stepmother?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Jocelyn. She never comes down here.”
    Ronalda opened one of the desk drawers, revealing eight strawberry wine coolers. “My secret stash. You want one?”
    She gave me a bottle; I screwed off the top and handed it back to her. She handed me another. We each drank two coolers as quickly as the effervescence would al ow. The taste was sweet and medicinal at the same time. We opened our third and proceeded with ladylike sips.
    “That was good,” Ronalda said.
    “Ditto.”
    We were both seated on the wooden desk, as there wasn’t even a chair in the office. The smel of our perfumes competed with the smel of the booze and the odor of our bodies. I thril ed at the confinement of it.
    Ronalda said, “Can I touch your hair?”
    I nodded and she reached out and gently stroked the hair covering my shoulder blades. Her touch was light, as though she worried she would hurt it.
    Ronalda’s had started to grow back at last. It was now long enough that it could be straightened and set with brush rol ers. There wasn’t enough to catch in a ponytail, but at least people had stopped cal ing her bald-headed.
    “Your hair is so pretty,” she said.
    “I look just like my mother,” I told her, so as not to seem conceited.
    “Me, too,” she said. “I look like she just spit me out.”
    “You have a picture of her?”
    Ronalda shook her head. “I didn’t bring anything with me from home. Just a paper sack with a change of clothes and a box of Kotex, but to look in my face, it’s like seeing my mother. Except that I am a nice person.”
    I didn’t press her, but I wanted to know more. I’d heard some stories from Marcus. His mother was friends with Ronalda’s stepmother. Ronalda, said the stepmother, had been living like a wild child in Indiana. No adult supervision. None whatsoever.
    “What is your mother like?” Ronalda asked me.
    I wasn’t sure how to answer. My mother was difficult to describe. Presently, she was at work, taking people’s blood pressure, listening to their hearts. In a couple hours, she would be home, cooking dinner like a regular mother. I almost told Ronalda that my mother was like a superhero with a secret identity, but that wasn’t real y true. My mother’s secret self was almost identical to her real self. You had to real y pay attention to see when she shifted.
    “My mother is named Gwen.” I drank some more of the wine cooler. There was a tightness in my forehead and a pleasant vacant feeling below.
    “Does she like Marcus?”
    “She can’t like what she doesn’t know about.” I laughed.
    “My stepmother doesn’t like Jerome. She says he’s too old for me, just because he’s in the service. I’l tel you exactly what she said. ‘Although you may be mature physical y, the mind can