Dope Sick Read Free

worrisome. What I wanted to do was to get some money together and send her down to Grandma Lois in Curry, North Carolina. The last time she had been down there, she came back looking good and feeling good for the first time.Grandma Lois didn’t allow any drinking, and Curry was such a two-stick town, you couldn’t get anything else.
    I got up and went out to the bathroom. Mama had her housecoat on. She had already put the water on and was shaking coffee from the can into the percolator. She looked at me as I went through the kitchen.
    â€œWhat you doing today?” she asked.
    â€œMaurice heard about jobs coming up at Home Depot,” I said. “We going down there and check it out.”
    Mama grunted in reply.
    I sat on the toilet. I liked to see my black thighs against the white porcelain. It was the one thing that Mama did that was cool, was to keep the bathroom clean. Other than that she was always too sick, or too drunk, to take care of any kind of business. When I was small and we were living on 147th Street, she used to tell me how her main chore as a kid was keeping the bathroom clean.
    â€œYour grandma Lois used to say, ‘Girl, thatbathroom so clean, I need to ask your permission to use it! ’”
    Grandma Lois had her thing together. It was a church kind of thing, but she had a lot of pride, and it hurt her to see Mom, her only daughter, get knocked around. When Grandma Lois had the chance to go down to Curry, she thought hard and long about leaving Arlena, but in the end she knew she wasn’t doing her any good in Harlem, so she left, hoping to build up something down in North Carolina that would make Mom want to join her.
    I washed up and thought about what I would tell the people down at Home Depot. First thing I would have to do is lie about my age. I would say I was nineteen so they wouldn’t ask me nothing about why I wasn’t in school. I had my fake GED in a plastic sleeve along with my Social Security card. I thought about saying that I’d taken some time off after high school because I was thinking about joining the army, but then I thought that probably wouldn’t work.
    Home Depot was the joint. I knew if I couldcop a job with them, I could get my thing together. Maybe I would find another place for me and Mama or even convince her to go down to North Carolina. I knew she didn’t want to go down with nothing in her pockets.
    â€œI don’t want nobody feeling sorry for me,” she said. “They can think what they want, but I don’t want to be explaining nothing to nobody.”
    I could dig that. If you had some money in your pocket, you could walk on your own side of the street and let people walk on they side. If it went down correct, I could send her some money every week and then she wouldn’t have to ask for nothing. That’s what life was about, being able to take care of your own business.
    â€œThe clinic opens at eight thirty,” Mama said. She was sitting at the table, making a circle with her fingers around the flowered coffee cup. She had nice fingers, long and slender. If she had had her nails done, they would’ve looked good.
    â€œYou got pains in your stomach again?”
    â€œIt’s just nervous,” she said. “You look like yougoing to a funeral in that white shirt. Is that new?”
    â€œYeah,” I answered. “Told you I got a job interview.”
    â€œWell, you should get it, as fine as you looking today,” Mama said. She had a smear of something white on her cheek.
    â€œYou coughing again?”
    â€œYou a doctor now?” she answered, smiling.
    â€œDoctor Dance,” I answered. “Yo, that’s hip.”
    The coffee she made was way too weak. I needed something strong in the morning.
    â€œWhere your prescription?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s on the refrigerator, in the bowl,” she said. “When you coming home?”
    â€œDepends on how long the