Free Bitch Is the New Black by Helena Andrews Page B

uniform. He had long legs and light skin. This was him.
    I imagined he was on the moon, and if I hoped for him enough, thought of him enough, prayed for him enough, he’dcome back down. I didn’t need saving, but I needed something. Every night for years I repeated the same line to baby Jesus or grown-up Jesus—whomever was listening: “Dear Lord, please let our paths cross someday.” We didn’t even have to talk or even know who the other one was. I just wanted him to see me.
    If he could see us in the bathroom—Frances on the toilet wiping up angry tears, and me running hot water over a washcloth—he’d have to be proud.
    There was blood on her back. Not in copious amounts or anything 911-worthy, but there was blood. Enough to usher me into puberty without any cramps of my own. Regardless of what I’d told the Nubes at school, I hadn’t gotten my period yet, but this, my official blood day, would do. I dabbed it away while she sat alone on the toilet. This used to be the best seat in the house, from which I watched Vernell pluck her eyebrows, apply her lipstick, and correctly insert a tampon. That day it became the headquarters of my adulthood.
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    See, I know a little something about lovers’ quarrels and feelings and a whole bunch of other shit. Heavy shit? Yes, my shit is, in fact, heavy. But it’s mine! Britanya, Miss “I’ve put my tongue in places the sun don’t shine,” couldn’t have it, didn’t deserve it, and wouldn’t be able to wash it down with her awaze tibs.
    According to my view of the world, the two of us had an appropriate work-friend/actual-friend balance. The only other time we’d hung out for real for real was at the row house next door to mine. I was cool with my neighbors, who liked foreign wine and African drums. Britanya came with. We got super drunk and stumbled back to my bat cave. It was late and the trains had already stopped running. Britanya would have to sleep in a faded“CU Cheer” T-shirt on a mattress of pillows in my bedroom. She could have just slept on the couch, but she didn’t.
    In the morning I tiptoed out to the bathroom, careful not to step on her head. I didn’t make her breakfast or anything. She didn’t say she’d call me. But it was obvious things had changed. We were now work best friends with an infinitesimal dash of sexual tension. With that came the foreseeable bout of verbal diarrhea that wearers of peasant skirts inevitably suffer from. She got comfortable. Then we got Ethiopian.
    Obviously I wasn’t going to respond in kind. Telling intimate details about my private life to a work wife I was trying to separate from? Um, no. So as to whet her appetite but not her lady parts, I told her that my mom was a lesbian, that my grandmother kidnapped me when I was a kid in order to save us from a life of Spanish crack whoredom, that Frances had been in a crazy abusive relationship when I was in middle school but that we got out of it by escaping to my dead grandfather’s house in Compton, and that I commuted two hours a day from there to get to a private school downtown, where I was a super genius who eventually got into the Ivy League, therefore setting in motion my evil plot to set the world ablaze.
    â€œYou’re just so robotic,” Britanya said.
    â€œWhat do you even mean by that? You hardly know me.”
    â€œYou say stuff like it’s nothing. Like you don’t even care.” She sounded concerned, but also curious.
    â€œWell, I don’t know what to tell you.” I was being honest.
    Then we split the bill, and I walked her to the metro station. The next day I translated our heart-to-heart into IM chatter—“then she’s all ure so robotic…gtfoh.” “Dude, she just wants your body. She doesn’t even know you like that. Ignore.” And I did.

Five
MILEAGE
    My dog, Miles, is super racist.
    He’s a