my eyes I could still see those six small cream-colored coffins lined up in a flower-lined row at the Second Baptist Church.
About a month after the fire, Regina’s mother, Miss Maggie, developed a weird phobia that a lot of us didn’t know much about then. Agoraphobia caused Miss Maggie to be too afraid to leave the house. Her fear was so deep, she wouldn’t even stand too close to a window. Regina felt obligated to spend as much time with her mother as possible. I visited Regina and Miss Maggie a lot, helping them take care of their apartment and doing chores for them that I’d rather get a whupping for than do at my own house. I felt it was my job to help them ease the pain that I had helped cause.
My plan to help Regina deal with her depression helped her but it depressed me. When I couldn’t deal with that, I turned my attention to Mimi Hollis, another girl with a disturbing background. Mimi was two years older than me and lived five blocks away from us. Everybody I knew was familiar with Mimi’s painful history, but I had heard it firsthand from her mother while she was sitting in our kitchen getting her hair done. In her fifth month of pregnancy, Mimi’s mother, Miss Odessa, had tried to abort Mimi. But Mimi had survived, and for the first five years of her life she seemed as normal as Miss Odessa’s other five children. Right after Mimi started school, she started behaving strangely. She would go for days at a time not talking, and she ate rocks and mud pies. One Sunday during church, she stood up in front of the whole congregation and exposed her private parts while Reverend Poe was preaching. Miss Odessa took Mimi from one county doctor to another, and not a one of them could put a name on Mimi’s condition. Odd, slow, and confused were just a few of the adjectives used to describe the girl’s behavior. It was no wonder we all called her Crazy Mimi. When she was nine, Miss Odessa took Mimi out of school and started teaching her herself at home.
When I was eleven and still in my tomboy mode, I had stumbled across Crazy Mimi one September evening in an alley giving blowjobs to some of Chester’s friends. I chased the boys away with a plank and escorted Crazy Mimi to my house. Even though I had taken her under my wing, she still ended up pregnant three years in a row by males she couldn’t or wouldn’t identify.
I spent a lot of time baby-sitting Crazy Mimi’s kids or helping her haul them around in a red wagon loaded down with Pampers and toys that we had purchased from either Sheffield’s Market or the nearby Piggly Wiggly.
It seemed odd that a mentally challenged girl like Crazy Mimi would take it upon herself to give me advice. “Carmen, there’s a lot of other cute boys around here. You need to quit mopin’ around about that Chester Sheffield. I used to be crazy about him myself, but I got over him real quick when other boys started payin’ me attention. Look at me now! I got three babies!”
I stared at Crazy Mimi’s narrow peach-colored face, big, glazed black eyes, and keen nose. I wondered how so many boys could overlook her long, flat breasts; her bell-shaped body, and thin, greasy hair that was always worn in a single lopsided braid. In the long, shapeless black duster she had on and with her sharp features, she looked like a black crow lounging on my bed. The thick makeup and sensible shoes she wore most of the time made her look ten years older. Which is what she told me when I asked her why she never wore jeans, T-shirts, and running shoes like the rest of us. Sadly, looking older often got her in trouble with men old enough to be her daddy.
Crossing her thick, knotty ankles, she added with a sneer, “I know for a fact that Burl Tupper likes you. I asked him myself.” Crazy Mimi cackled and lifted her voluminous outfit, revealing a stiff-looking white girdle but no panties.
Getting over Chester was not something I wanted to do. Even though he had me at the top of his shit list, I still had my crush on him. I planned to do whatever it took to turn his feelings toward me around.
“I don’t want no potbellied pig like Burl,” I said emphatically.
Crazy Mimi and I were in my bedroom that sultry Saturday afternoon in late October, trying to decide what to wear to Kitty Sheffield’s Halloween party a week away. A mask of a scowling red demon left over from the Mobile Mardi Gras we’d attended in February lay upside down on the bed next to me. Crazy Mimi and I had both decided that we were too old and cute to be wearing masks that ghoulish. And the last thing I wanted was for Chester to see me as something evil. I had decided to go to the party dressed as a queen wearing a crown.
Crazy Mimi was sitting on the side of my bed next to her drooling, moon-faced two-year-old son, Boogie. I was peeping out of my bedroom window, parting the curtains with my head, hoping to get a glimpse of Chester. I had seen him earlier outside talking to Daddy. Mama and my sister Babette were in the kitchen cooking up a storm. So was every other woman on our block. With the window and my door slightly open, I could smell macaroni and cheese, collard greens, buttered cornbread, pork chops, peach cobbler, and smothered chicken coming from every direction.
“Well, Chester don’t want you,” Crazy Mimi reminded me. She then delivered a well-orchestrated snap of her thick fingers, swatting Boogie’s hand with her other hand as he unraveled a thread on my new chenille bedspread. “Behave, Boogie, or Carmen won’t ask us to stay for dinner so we can help eat them screamin’ pork chops. Girl, your mama cooks a mean pot of greens, too.” Crazy Mimi looked at me and nodded; I nodded back. She sucked in her breath before continuing. “One other thing you need to know, girl.” She paused and waved her finger in my face. “The best way to get a boy to want you is to make him think another boy wants you. And didn’t I just tell you that Burl wants you?”
I carefully considered Crazy Mimi’s words. For someone so crazy, she sometimes made a lot of sense.
CHAPTER 8
Thanks to Crazy Mimi’s advice, I decided to pay more attention to Burl. It sounded like he could be a valuable tool for me to use. Now that I knew he liked me more than I thought, I decided that it would be a shame not to take advantage of the situation.
Burl rarely came to my house, but I decided to increase my visits to his, anyway. Through Kitty, I would make sure her sexy brother, Chester, heard about Burl and me spending so much time together. She loved reporting hot stories almost as much as she liked boys. And knowing how melodramatic Kitty was, I had enough faith in her to believe she would add just enough spice to whet Chester’s appetite.
I had no idea how high a price I would end up paying for using Burl.
I was not fickle like some of the girls I knew. I was focused. Other than Chester, I had other boys on my mind, but not in the same romantic way. My cousin Baby Red, who lived in Mobile, was Chester’s age. Baby Red was the only boy I really felt close to at the time. He was the smartest, most generous, most free-spirited boy I knew. Other than his bike, fine wine, good marijuana, and a few philosophy books, he didn’t care about money or many other material things. Baby Red had a lot to do with the mess I eventually made of my life, but I’ll get to him later.
A few days after Crazy Mimi’s last visit, I decided to visit Burl after school for the third time in three days. I dropped my books on his front porch glider as he led me into his house, grinning and motioning for me to be quiet because his mother was resting. I tiptoed behind Burl through a narrow, gloomy hallway to the living room. Burl had a nice round face with dimples and big gray eyes, but he was a head shorter than I was. He waddled like a penguin, and from behind he looked like one. Thick, curly hair covered his head like a ball of black cotton. His hair, his dimples, and his pretty gray eyes saved him from a life of shame and victimization, a situation so many other unpopular kids had to endure.
Once you saw and got to know Burl’s mama, it was easy to see why Burl was the way he was. Miss Mozelle was old enough to be Burl’s grandmother. When they moved to Alabama from Detroit seven years ago, that’s what we all thought. According to the gossips, Miss Mozelle had left her husband for another man. Once they got to Alabama, the man left her for another woman. That made Miss Mozelle so bitter, she had not been with another man since. She now devoted all of her attention to Burl. She still combed his hair and picked out all of his clothes. “If Burl was to die, they better dig a hole deep enough for Mozelle, too,” Daddy commented one evening over dinner.
Miss Mozelle looked like a full-grown seal. She was stretched out on her couch