Free Criminal by Terra Elan McVoy Page B

this yard, not on that step, not even on this street, or so help me I’ll make you sorry you even looked at that nasty-ass, cop-killing gangbanger you fooling with.”
    Bird had come out onto the front step and was watching us. “That’s enough, Yetta,” she said, tired but calm. “We don’t know any of that’s going to happen.”
    Kenyetta whipped back around to glare at me. “I do. I know. From more than one example.” Her hands were on her hips, but she looked like she might lunge at me again. “My sister’s ex-husband had this man working for him in his air-condition business. Man got busted for weed or some such and the police were all over that office, looking at papers, hiring records, and all that. He had to pay some big-ass fine just not to go to jail himself. Those police don’t mess around, girl. It ain’t like you just say, ‘Oh, but, Officer, I’m a good person,’ and they leave you be.”
    I didn’t know if what Kenyetta was saying was true, but even if she was lying about her ex-brother-in-law and her cousin, something cold in me knew it would end up being true about this, about Bird.
    â€œBird, I just wanted to talk to you,” I said over Kenyetta’s shoulder. If she would just listen, just hear me out and let me explain, I knew we would figure out a solution. We would get out of this mess.
    â€œShe don’t want to talk to you, whore-ass trouble,” Kenyetta muttered.
    Bird wasn’t looking at either me or Kenyetta but somewhere else, far off.
    â€œBird, please.”
    â€œYou get out of here,” Kenyetta said. I kept watching Bird, begging her with my eyes, my thoughts, my heart, to please just talk to me. But she wouldn’t. She told Kenyetta to come on and went inside without looking my way.

I WALKED BACK TO CHERRY’S TO GET MY PURSE. SHE STILL wasn’t there, but I didn’t leave a note. Mostly because, for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t thinking of anyone else but Bird. Bird and what Kenyetta had said, about them maybe being able to take Jamelee away. I couldn’t let that happen. Not after everything Bird had done for me. I knew at least that much. But it was like I didn’t know anything else. Not then, and not while I was sitting on the bus, or during the long, hot walk. I wasn’t thinking, and I wasn’t crying either. I just was. Like a sleepwalker. Or like someone who has accepted a thing that she knew all along Fate was going to wind up making her do, and now it was time to do it.
    I pulled the glass door open. It was dim inside. I told them, “I need to talk to Detective DuPree.”

IT TOOK A WHILE FOR THE DETECTIVE TO SEE ME, BUT WHEN he did, it wasn’t just him. Like he knew I was going to have something important to say. He took my name, my age, and asked me a few questions to determine whether I was crazy or on drugs, and then I started the story. They began writing at once, all three of them. During this, a part of me was there, in the room, telling them what they needed to know, but another part of me was reliving the whole thing in more detail than I’d remembered before. Much more than I was actually saying out loud.
    Dee picked me up from work at four thirty on Friday. He doesn’t do that often, and the other girls all looked at me with knowing, jealous pride. My man. Coming to take me out on a Friday. I waved to them and giggled. They clucked behind me. Dee and I drove to getbeer and then the drive-through at Checkers to get dinner. Food for Bird too.
    Of course the beer part I didn’t say. Or even about the girls at the salon. Just the time he picked me up, and that we’d gotten food, went to Bird’s. It felt important to tell them those things since, for me, it was when the whole weekend started.
    Dee had weed, so we all smoked up—even Bird a little—all of us chilling, watching TV. The baby rolling on