Free On the Come Up by Hannah Weyer Page B

up. What she know about money anyway. Hadn’t earned a dollar in her life.
    But Blessed leaned back all of a sudden and went quiet, looking at Darius, like she takin’ him in. Soaking him up with her eyes.
    Finally she said, Well, AnnMarie, looks like you got yourself a good thing.
    Ma, please.
    Please, Ma
, AnnMarie said, jumping up. ’Cause Blessed had started to cry. Tears coming out her eyes, running down her face, shaky fingers brushing them aside.
    No, AnnMarie. I’m happy for you. You a sweet couple and I wish you the best in life, I do. I bless you both. You’re blessed and I’m gonna help with the baby any way I can.
    Thank you, Miss Blessed, Darius said. We appreciate it.
    Go on, sit down AnnMarie and eat. Eat now.
    Darius leaned over his plate then, and began to eat. Didn’t matter the food mad nasty, salt for sugar, sugar for allspice—he dug in and ate. AnnMarie looked at him sideways and he glanced at her and smiled.
    Blessed had a boyfriend once, before the stroke when AnnMarie was ten years old. His name was Prince. He had a table set up on Mott Avenue where he sold incense and statuettes and dolls the size of a grown child. Beautiful dolls with brown skin and long, cascading ringlets and eyelids that flipped open and closed. Blessed would pick AnnMarie up from school and they’d wander home, buy a thing or two from the fruit stand then stop to talk to Prince who wore a Muslim cap he called a kufi. AnnMarie’d peel back the mango skin and suck the juice, watching her mother and Prince talking. Blessed would tilt her head to the side, smiling, then laugh outright at something he said. Then Prince was Blessed’s boyfriend, coming around the apartment, staying after supper to watch the TV. He went with them to church. For walks on the boardwalk. Sometimes he brought bags a groceries. He’d lean down, cup her chin in his big hand. He’d say, Hello AnnMarie, how’s you. Her mother’d laugh and say, She growin’ whatshe is. Eating me out of house and home. And in these moments, AnnMarie’d lean against her mother feeling shy but happy, and Blessed would pull her into an embrace, like she was something special.
    He had a house with black bars on the windows down by the water there on Healy Avenue. It had a big living room with a gigantic TV set on the carpet. Shiny clean kitchen, perfume soaps in the bathroom. Looks like you got a feminine touch, Blessed said, looking at him. Prince rocked back and forth on his heels and laughed. I like a clean house, it’s true. He showed AnnMarie the room where he kept the dolls, opened up a big box and peeled away the sheet of plastic. Dolls the size of AnnMarie herself, laying faceup like soldiers in a row, their eyes open, staring at her. AnnMarie gasped. They so pretty, she said. Go on, you can take one. She’d never had a doll before, not even a stuffed animal. Grandma Mason didn’t allow it. Thought it made them spoiled. She knew she was too old to be carrying a doll around, but AnnMarie couldn’t resist. They was too beautiful.
    Prince turned on the TV and the room lit up all at once. Blessed said, Go on, sit down and watch. We goin’ to talk. Then they went down the hall and disappeared into the room at the end. AnnMarie stood at the closed door and listened. She heard murmurs, then it went quiet.
    After dinner was ate and the card table folded again, Blessed fell asleep sitting up on the couch. AnnMarie pulled Darius into the kitchen and pressed against his rock-solid body, locking lips, his tongue soft and spicy in her mouth and she felt herself go wet, hungry for him even with thoughts of Prince pushing their way to the surface. Prince who’d hoisted her onto his back to play piggyback, his fingers reaching under her dress, poking inside her underwear ’til she wriggled free. She ran into the other room where hermother was and told. AnnMarie couldn’t understand why Blessed slapped her silly, saying
Look how you embarrassing Mr. Prince. No one