Free Who Asked You? by Terry McMillan Page A

You’d probably be fucking him. You L.A. hoes all alike. My sister warned me but I didn’t listen. I want your ass out of here by the first.”
    “You can’t put me out, Tierra. Both of our names happen to be on the lease in case you forgot, so you need to get the fuck over yourself.” And I crossed my arms. Dared the bitch to say another word. She stormed her insecure ass on outta there and slammed the door.
    I decide to listen to her voice message: “Kim, this Tierra calling and I just want you to know that you can stay here. All my shit’ll be gone by the time you get home. Sneaky bitch.”
    What?
    I replay it just to make sure I heard right. It says the same exact thing loud and clear. This means she’s breaking the lease and I can’t afford this apartment by myself and I ain’t about to look for no roommate on craigslist.

    I need a nap. I don’t like having too much on my mind, especially when I can’t do a whole lot right then and there to fix it. But if I fall asleep and Mr. Lee wakes up and I don’t hear him and he fall out the damn bed and hurt hisself then this would probably be Endsville for me. And I’ve been on top of things here. That’s funny. But I am not laughing. What I need to do is finish filling out this application for the traveling nurse program because it takes a month for them to let you know if you’ve been accepted. I might be homeless in a few weeks so I decide this might also be a good time to pray. But God can’t pay my rent.
    So I watch
The Price Is Right
and don’t win, not even so much as a kitchen appliance, some boring furniture, or a trip to Hawaii. I watch two soap operas and laugh all the way through ’em. I give Mr. Lee his lunch and then decide to just leave the real world altogether, so I dig in my gym bag and pull out my Harry Potter
Sorcerer’s Stone
book. I love all this wizard shit. I wish I could fly. Sometimes I wish I could disappear and reappear and come back as a giraffe. They can see everything, they can eat the highest leaves, they can run fast, and even though they ain’t the cutest of jungle animals, they ain’t violent. I was just thinking about something. If I get into this traveling nurse’s program, I need to stop talking like I’m ghetto, because I know how. And I cuss like a fucking sailor, but mostly in my head when I’m thinking, like now. So I’m going to try to think and talk like I went to nursing school and I paid attention in English class. I can turn off the ghetto talk on a dime, especially when I’m around professional white folks. Black ones, too. Like my employer, Miss Betty.
    I’m not feeling too Hogwarty. But happy birthday, Harry. Back at you soon. Right now, I have to figure out the most intelligent manner in which to solve my housing dilemma. See how many extra words that took? What I’m worried about is my credit rating. I am never late with my bills and it took me a while to get it up to 720 but that’s because back in my twenties when I was depressed and didn’t know why, instead of getting high like everybody else I went shopping. Fucked up all my credit cards, and then after I got diagnosed and put on meds I started paying ’em off and now I’m back on track. I might see if I can find me a homosexual. They make good roommates. They for damn sure neat and clean and most of ’em can decorate and you ain’t gotta worry about fucking ’em. I’ma give this some serious thought. I know a lot of homosexuals thanks to my brother being gay, so maybe I should ask him if he knows anybody who wants to live with a quiet, sweet, clean, responsible girl. If necessary, I’ll pretend to be a lesbian if it helps. Hell, this problem might already be solved.
    I decide to check on Mr. Lee when I hear those little critters slamming the car door and galloping like Secretariat toward the front door. Would it just kill them to walk? I mean, what’s the big fucking hurry? This is just one more reason why I don’t care for kids.