Free On the Come Up by Hannah Weyer

them.
    What happened now, Carlton said.
    AnnMarie felt a sudden rage and helplessness. Why you gotta be here, she screamed. Why don’t you get the fuck outta my house.
    But it was AnnMarie who left.
    Walking mad slow over to Nameoke where Darius lived. She didn’t know what he gonna say. Her eyes swollen, face blotchy. What he gonna say.
    She’d seen him fly into a rage before. Seen him knock his mother down a flight of stairs. His mother, Darla, grabbing on to his arm to keep her balance, but he’d wrenched free and back she fell. Up in his sister’s face. Beefing. Watched him clock some fella in the head, just a little thing set it off, and when the boy fell, he beat him bloody.
    He was sitting up on the front porch with Raymel and Jason. Raymel glancing at her, then away as she approached.
    Darius stood up and frowned. What happened, he said.
    Inside the kitchen, away from the others, she whispered it, afraid of his reaction, even though he’d seen her do it, hold her legs in the air. Even though he never used protection, not once in the entire time they was together. Still she was afraid. But before she could look up, she heard him whoop, felt his arms go around her waist and he was swinging her around. AnnMarie’s legs dangling off the floor, her arms around his shoulders, heart pounding.

    They went over to the liquor store and bought a bottle of Hennessy to celebrate.
    Darius telling everybody—we got Trinidad, we got Jamaican, we got Indian blood. Laughing and cheering. That gonna be one beautiful baby. And AnnMarie sat back on the porch, hearing the
clink-clink
of glass, and told herself to chill, feeling certain now it wasn’t something she dreamed up on her own. He’d claimed it. They doing it together—making a family, a true family together.
    And later, after he got drunk and told her he was wild with love for her, she didn’t go home, she stayed all night with him in the walk-in. Fourteen years old, with her own man and a baby on the way. Right before he fell asleep she said, You gonna marry me, Darius, and he said, ’Course I marry you. You turn eighteen, we getting married.
    He fell asleep but she didn’t. She lay there looking up at the small cut of window, watching a patch of light move across the wall then disappear. She felt his arm over her waist and thought about the room her mother once had in the shelter.
    It was a small little room. Very small with a twin bed and a chair. AnnMarie was living with Grandma Mason. In the beginning, her mother would come sometimes on the weekend and take her out of there. They’d go to the park, to McDonald’s, sometimes to church. They held hands. In the evening, she’d take AnnMarie back to the shelter. But there was no childs allowed in the bedrooms after lights out, so Blessed would have to sneak her in. In the shower room, she’d set her inside a laundry bag she kept in a cart, pull the cart down the hall to her room.
    AnnMarie sat scrunched up, clothes on top her head and she’d hear Blessed whisper. Quiet now. Shhhh. She’d sit in the bag, mad quiet, waiting ’til the lady check and leave. Then she’d feel her mother’s hands lifting her out and they’d sleep together inthat narrow bed. The wall on one side a her, Blessed on the other. Blessed’s arm around her waist and AnnMarie’d think, I’m in my mother’s bed, with my mother and everything fine. In the morning, Blessed put her back inside the laundry bag, pull the string, wheel the cart outta there. Take her down to the street, she’d go back to Grandma Mason house.

baby love

13
    Like a thief in the night I was, running from your father. Like a thief in the night. Blessed leaned on her cane, giving AnnMarie one a her looks, like she mean business.
    Except AnnMarie had heard it before. And it wasn’t night. It was daytime. He was at the sugarcane factory when Blessed left, shoving clothes into a bag, screen door slamming.
    You don’t got something to say?
    AnnMarie yawned. I