Free Shortie Like Mine by Ni-Ni Simone Page B

telling her everything would be okay. I knew she needed a friend. “Call me later.”
    â€œI will, girl. Bye, Ki-Ki.”
    â€œBye, Shae.”
    As we watched Shae cross the street to go home, I snapped at Ki-Ki. “Why did you do that?!”
    â€œWhat?” She looked at me surprised. “It wasn’t no one but a stupid fiend begging for money.”
    â€œNo, it was Shae’s real mother! I can’t believe you did that!”
    â€œWhat?” Ki-Ki looked at me surprised and I noticed she started playing with her cell phone again. “That wasn’t Shae’s mother. Don’t her mother live in Texas or Tennessee or some place?”
    â€œShae’s mother is a fiend and she’s been one all her life! And I don’t appreciate the way you were talking to her. You ain’t have to say nothin’! Now Shae probably feels like trash. Listen”—I stood up—“I need to go check on my friend, and you need to roll!”
    â€œMy bad,” Ki-Ki said with a sly smile as she walked away. “My bad.”
    I walked over to Shae’s house and her father let me in. I knocked on her bedroom door before I walked into her room. She was lying on her bed crying.
    â€œShae.” I paused, because for a moment I didn’t know what to say. “She didn’t know.”
    â€œWho, Ki-Ki or my mother? ’Cause no, Ki-Ki didn’t know,” she said. “But my mother, she knew and she keeps doing this!”
    â€œWell Shae ... she is your mother.”
    â€œNo, Seven, you don’t understand. I have given her so many chances to be in my life and every time she told me she was going to get clean or better yet stay clean, I was always so excited. And she always played me. And just when I was ready to introduce her to the world as my real mother so I could stop faking the funk, what does she do? She gets high again ... Do you know I have eight brothers and sisters and she has done this to all of us. Yet, I’m always the one ready to give her another chance.”
    â€œWhat? I thought it was just you and your two brothers?”
    â€œNo, my brothers and I have the same mother and father and that’s why we’re together.”
    â€œWhat?” I was in shock. “I thought brothers and sisters lived together?”
    â€œSeven, please. Be for real. I have two older sisters. One on drugs, the other one was adopted and doesn’t want anything to do with us. My oldest brother’s in jail and I got a younger sister that’s in a foster home someplace. I don’t know where she is. And really, the last I heard, my mother had a baby and left the baby in the hospital.”
    â€œWow,” was all I could say.
    â€œExactly, so I know what I’m talking about when I say I don’t want anybody to know who she is. If people knew my mother was a fiend, I swear to you I would never come back outside or go to school again.”
    â€œNow, Shae,” I said, while thinking that maybe talking up for her, by telling Ki-Ki about her mother, wasn’t such a good thing. “How is anyone going to find out? And you know your daddy is not gon’ let you stop coming to school. So, please. Plus what I’ma do if you don’t come outside? You need to understand you can’t battle your mother’s drug addiction. She’s the only one who can.”
    â€œYeah.” She sniffed, as she wiped her eyes. “You’re right.”
    â€œBesides”—I laughed—“you know Big Country waitin’ on you to call him back.”
    â€œOh, I forgot about my husband.”
    I gave her a big hug. “Big Country tryna bag you, girl.”
    â€œShut up.” She playfully mushed me in my head. “And let’s call him.”
    After calling Melvin and hearing that his new pet name for Shae was Cornbread, Shae grabbed her clothes and we went back to my house to get ready for the game, all