Free Mommy's Angel by Miasha Page A

besides chicken wings and boxed macaroni. I started thinking about my older brother Curt and how much things would have been different had he been alive. He would have been twenty-four. He was a lot older than me, but we were close. I remember he used to pick me and Naja up from elementary school and take us shopping at the Manhattan Mall. Those were the days. I wished he were still with us so bad. He would have never saw us living like we did. My mom probably would have never got strung out in the first place. And Curt damn sure would not have had Marvin in this house.
    I drained the ground beef and put the spaghetti in the boiling water. I stirred the sauce and poured the meat in it slowly. While I waited for the spaghetti to get done I set the kitchen table. Kindle came in the kitchen before I yelled for him and Naja to come eat. I guessed he was hungry.
    “What you cookin?” he asked me, standing on his toes trying to see on top of the stove.
    “Step back. It’s hot,” I told him. “Matter fact, go upstairs and wash your hands and tell Naja to come on and eat.”
    “You made spaghetti?” My mom appeared in the kitchen.
    “I thought you was sleep,” I said, without looking at my mom.
    “Put a plate up for me, okay? I’m goin’ around Jackie’ s.”
    “You want to eat now with us?” I asked my mom, finally looking at her bruised face.
    I hoped she would say yes, because then she wouldn’t have went and got high. That would have been one less bag of dope being put in her system.
    “No. I’m not hungry right now. I need to go around the corner. Aunt Jackie got some money for me,” she said as she took our Rocawear coat off the basement door and put it on. She dug into the pockets and asked me, “Where my cigarettes at?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “They was in my pockets. Who wore this jacket last?”
    “Naja,” I told her.
    “Naja!” my mom yelled upstairs.
    “What?” Naja yelled back.
    “You seen my cigarettes in my coat pocket?”
    “It wad only one in there,” Naja yelled.
    “Well, where is it?”
    “I gave it to my friend!”
    “What you mean, you gave it to ya friend! Keep ya fuckin’ hands off my shit, okay! You ain’t grown!”
    My mom came back into the kitchen. She was upset.
    “Angel, give me five dollars until I get back from Aunt Jackie’ s.”
    “Ain’t you about to go get money from Aunt Jackie now?” I asked my mom, recalling her excuse for not having dinner with us.
    “Yeah. But I wanna stop at C & S’s and get some cigarettes first. I’ll give it right back to you. That damn sister of yours giving my cigarettes away like she paid for ’em or somethin’.”
    I didn’t feel like going back and forth with my mom. I was hungry and I had a bad day as it was, so I gave her five dollars so that she could go about her business.
    Naja, Kindle, and me ate dinner at the table like a family. They complimented me on my good cooking. I put my mom up a plate and put the rest of the food in the refrigerator. I got Kindle out of the dirty pajamas he had on all day and realized he didn’t have any more clean ones. I organized his dirty clothes into piles of darks and whites and put them in separate trash bags. I gathered me and Naja’s dirty clothes, too, and made it my plan to go to the Laundromat that next day, especially since I couldn’t go to school.
    It was about ten o’clock when I started feeling aches in my body, probably from the fight I had. I laid down in my bed and was so tired I wound up falling asleep without calling Jamal at eleven like I had done every Monday night that he worked late.
    I was in a good sleep when I heard rummaging in my room. I woke up, and through the dark I saw my mom going through my drawers like she was looking for something.
    “Mom, what are you doin? It’s twelve o’clock at night. What are you looking for?” I asked her.
    She ignored me, continuing to dig through my stuff like a frantic robber.
    “Mom! Stop! What is wrong with