Deal With It Read Free Page A

after that. Before she knew it, she had become a young wife and mother all at the same time, and any hopes and dreams that she had were immediately flushed down the toilet. Therefore, going to college was not an option for me; it was something that had to be done—for both Mommy and me.
    “Now here’s a hairdo that you could really rock, Tameka.” Mommy pointed to a photo of Fantasia, with her spiked haircut, and giggled.
    “Oh, you got jokes,” I said and stuffed a huge spoonful of the sundae into my mouth. “I’m not trying to cut my hair.”
    “I might cut mine,” Mommy announced, her shoulder-length locks bouncing onto her shoulders. She was never afraid to try new things. She would go bald just to see if she liked it, and her hair would grow back, as if nothing had ever changed. “I might get me one of those cute little sassy hairdos for the spring.”
    “You can’t cut your hair! What would Daddy think?” I shrieked.
    “He would think that I’m a grown woman who can do whatever she wants to do with her hair.” She grabbed the spoon from my hand, dipped it into the sundae and stuffed a huge spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
    My mother was so confident. She didn’t care what people said or thought about her. She did what she wanted to do and always spoke her mind. With a body like a twenty-one-year-old, she rocked Apple Bottoms jeans, tight-fitting shirts and wedge-heeled shoes like nobody’s business. She knew all the latest dances, had all the latest music and was completely in love with Usher. She kept saying that if he was just a little bit older and she was a little younger, she would holler at him.
    Every day, like clockwork, we watched 106 & Park, and we never missed an episode of Baldwin Hills. Sometimes having aconversation with Mommy was like talking to one of my girlfriends at school. She was just that cool. I often wondered what attracted her to my daddy, because he was the complete opposite: he was quiet and never said what was really on his mind, not until it had time to fester. Then it would come out the wrong way. Mommy was always telling him that if he wasn’t careful, he was going to wind up with an ulcer. “You have to tell people off right then and there, not wait until you’re seeing red,” she would say. “By that time, it’s too late.”
    Daddy spent hours working at the studio. Life as a music producer required many hours of work with artists and a strong dedication to the music. Some nights he didn’t even come home. But he was strict about my grades and made sure that my clothes were appropriate before I left the house. He didn’t like the idea of my dating boys, but he lived with it. It wasn’t unusual for him to intercept my calls and give a boy the third degree before handing over the phone. Daddies were like that. They didn’t play when it came to their baby girls.
    My cell phone, which was on the coffee table, buzzed, and I reached for it.
    “Oh, no!” Mommy yelled. “You can’t answer that. We’re having our girl time, and we said we weren’t answering any phones today.”
    “ You said we weren’t answering any phones today. I never said that,” I reminded her. “Besides, it’s just a text message, Mommy. It might be from Vance.”
    She grabbed the phone, and I wrestled her to get it from her, but she was strong. Before long we were on the floor, wrestling over my phone and giggling. When she finally got it away from me, she rushed into the kitchen and I followed. She flipped my cell phone open and began reading my text message, invading my privacy.
    I need U. She read aloud. “What does he mean, he needs you?”
    “Mom, it’s not cool to read other people’s text messages.”
    “No, what’s not cool is for a seventeen-year-old boy to be texting my daughter, talking about how he needs her!”
    Was she serious?
    “Mommy, you can need people in different ways. Maybe he just needs to talk or something,” I lied. I knew exactly what Vance