Mommy's Angel Read Free Page B

kept to myself. But for real though, I loved Jamal to death. He wasn’t like most guys. He really cared about me. He was always on my case about school, and basically he picked up where my mom left off.
    Speaking of school, on my list of places I hated most school came second to home. And it wasn’t because I was like most people and just didn’t like school because to be real school was all right to me. I mean, I got good grades and never had problems with my classes. It was just that it was high school, which meant it was a fashion show. Everybody dressed fly, well, at least all the girls. They wore only name-brand clothes and jewelry and their hair and nails stayed done. So for somebody like me, whose mom was smokin’, it was hard for me to compete with them. I hardly wore name-brand clothes and when I did it was the off-the-rack kind, the defected stuff that got sold for cheap in the secondhand stores. And all the nice clothes I had when my brother was alive and we had money were too small, so whenever I tried to wear any of them, I got laughed at. I was constantly fighting to defend myself. So, no, I was not a troublemaker, but I was damned if I let those girls, specifically, Marie and her squad, call me all kinds of names. That explained the fights.
    After hanging up with Jamal, I laid in bed a little longer contemplating what I was going to do that day. Through my half-open eyes I watched my little sister get ready for school. Naja was a shorter version of me, except she was a shade lighter than my golden complexion and she had a pair of dimples that were the only telltale sign of her being twelve years old. Her hair was as curly and jet-black as mine and she was as thick and overdeveloped as me, too. She sat on the edge of her bed and began digging through a trash bag of dirty clothes. She pulled out a pair of dingy jeans, shook them, and placed them on her bed. She then retrieved a pair of socks from the same bag. I turned over in my bed and faced the wall. The pictures of Jamal that were taped to the chipping paint made me grin. I felt tingly as I imagined hearing Jamal’s knock sound through that wall. Whenever I heard that knock I knew it was a new day and everything that had happened before then didn’t matter. It was out of my head. It was the past.
    “Angel,” Naja said as she gently nudged me on my arm.
    “What?” I asked as I turned toward my sister.
    “You got fifty cents so I can get a bagel?” she asked.
    “Didn’t Mommy go food shopping?” I questioned.
    “No,” Naja said with twisted lips and attitude. “She got her money yesterday, but she gave her card to Aunt Jackie,” Naja explained.
    I knew what that meant. Aunt Jackie let somebody spend all the money on the card for half the amount and her and my mom used the cash to get high. This happened often, at least every other month. It was only a few times that my mom actually had willpower enough to use her money on food as it was for.
    “Naja, pass me my jeans,” I said as I motioned for her to give me the pair of jeans that were draped over the foot of my bed frame.
    I dug in all of the pockets and gathered the loose change. It totaled eighty-five cents. I dumped it into Naja’s palm.
    “Here.”
    “Thanks,” she said as she headed out of our room. “I’ll pay you back,” she added as she left, possibly headed for school.
    I closed my eyes to keep from crying. I couldn’t believe how bad our situation had gotten in just a couple years. It was crazy how one day we had everything and hardly any worries and the next we were barely able to eat.
    I decided just then that I would look for a job that day. I was not about to spend a whole day in the house with my mom and Marvin anyway. I got up, took a stand-up bath, put on some clothes, and left out.
    The air was brisk and the wind was blowing hard. For a minute I wanted to turn around and get back into my bed, but I had a plan and I didn’t want to put it off until another day.