House of Cars Read online

  I remember when I first saw Sierra. It was when school first started. I still had my old cell phone then, so when I saw that she looked just like Rihanna, I had to step to her and ask for her phone number. She was looking so dang good to me, so I texted her the same night. Everything was cool until about a week later, the phone got turned off, and then a couple of weeks after that, I lost the phone. I think I left it in one of the restrooms or motel rooms where we had been. I can’t remember. I told Sierra that since I lost my phone that my pops had it turned off, which was partially true.

  “When are you going to get your new phone?” I remember she asked me.

  “I don’t know. Pops is tripping. He said since I lost my phone that I would have to buy my own phone. You gone buy me one?” I asked her one day while we were tripping at school.

  “Boy, please. I don’t know,” she had told me. “I might.”

  Of course, she didn’t buy me a phone, and I didn’t get another phone. Well, I did get another phone but it was one of those free phones that folks get when they’re on food stamps. Think I was about to let her or anybody at Fairley see me with that kinda phone? No way.

  Basketball season started and me and Sierra didn’t have too much time to talk. She was too busy doing her cheerleading thing and I was busy making a name for myself as the point guard for Fairley High.

  I was homeless for sure, but I was not about to let it ruin my chance to be one of Fairley’s best point guards ever.

  Chapter 3

  I pulled out my Pops’ free phone. Why couldn’t Pops keep this food stamp phone and let me keep his Cricket phone? Anyway, he didn’t, so I was stuck with a useless phone that I kept out of sight from my friends. Everyone knew that these free phones all looked the same, and I wasn’t going to be caught with it and be embarrassed. I don’t know how Pops managed to get one because we weren’t on food stamps. And from what I know about ‘em, that’s the way people get ‘em. I looked at the phone and checked to see what time it was. That was about all it was good for, keeping time.

  Fifteen more minutes and I was out of this joint. Another end of a boring school day. I struck out walking toward Nyla’s school to pick her up. Usually we went and hung out at the library, which was a couple of blocks from her school, until Pops came to get us, but tonight I had a basketball game so I didn’t know what I was going to do with her. I went and picked her up and then I had to hurry up and get back to school. Most of the time, Pops was there to get her on the evenings when I had a game. And, now, he needed to hurry and come get her before I got in trouble with Coach. Almost as soon as I walked in the gym with Nyla, I saw Coach Byrd.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Coach came up and asked me. Coach was six nine, had a pouch for a belly, and always wore a Fairley High Bulldog cap. He was blacker than midnight and sported a shiny bald head underneath his cap. His voice was brutally harsh and no matter how calm he may have been, he always sounded like he was ready to explode at any given minute. He got drafted to the NBA back in the day, and played a couple of seasons for the Portland Trailblazers, until he tore his Achilles tendon and that ended his career. Anyway, Coach looked like he was about to go off. Pops had promised he was going to be here to pick up Nyla in time but he hadn’t gotten here yet. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was scared that I might get put on the bench for bringing Nyla with me.

  “Coach, I’m sorry, but my Pops had to work late.” Another lie, but what was I was supposed to say? Man, Pops was ruining my life! “He ought to be here in a minute,” I tried explaining.

  “Hey there, pretty girl,” Coach said to Nyla. He patted her on top of the head, then smiled at her before he turned back toward me. “I guess you’re going to be sitting on the bench tonight ‘cause this right here ain’t gonna work.” Coach rolled his eyes at me and walked off.

  “Nyl, I’m hungry,” Nyla started her whining.

  “Shut up, will you? Just shut up. You already got me in trouble,” I yelled at her and stormed out of the gym with her running behind me crying. This was so unfair and so embarrassing.

  What was I going to do? I had to find somebody to watch Nyla until Pops came. She was holding me back, she was another unwanted responsibility Pops had put on me. I know he has to work, but I have things to do too, other than babysit my little sister. What about my life? What about the things I’m missing out on? Pops was the adult in this three-person family. Why did he put this off on me? And why won’t he just come on out and tell my aunt and uncle that we’re homeless? Yeah, they live out of town in Chicago, but still, they could probably help Pops out, maybe even help us get a spot so we won’t have to be sleeping in a dang Yukon! He said that my Aunt Barb and my Uncle Joe had sent him some money before school started back to help him make ends meet, but that’s the last I ever heard him talk about them. Why couldn’t he ask them again? He had this thing that what goes in our family circle stays in our family circle. Well, what I don’t get is why he won’t tell them we don’t have a place to live? I mean, dang…wouldn’t they be considered as part of the family circle? Sometimes Pops just didn’t make sense. I wish I could call Aunt Barb and Uncle Joe myself, but I wouldn’t dare betray Pops like that. No, I had to stick with him like Momz would want me to.

  “Hey, what’s wrong with your little sister?” Daisha Ford asked, walking up to me and Nyla. “What did he do to you?” she said to Nyla. Daisha was in my geography class. She used to be Randy Jones’ girlfriend, but only for a few months from what Zach told me. Randy was one of Zach’s friends, but Randy was a sophomore now so he didn’t really mess with us freshmen anymore. Guess he thought we were beneath him or something. I could care less what he or anyone else thought. I was holding my own by making a good name for myself, and by being one of the starting five on the basketball team.

  “Nothing is wrong with her. She’s just being a crybaby is all,” I said and looked at Nyla. I was so mad at her for acting like a baby. All of her unnecessary crying needed to stop.

  “I’m hungry.” Nyla kept crying.

  Daisha looked at me like I was the meanest big brother in the world.

  “Your little sister says she’s hungry. Aren’t you going to get her something to eat? The candy lady is right across the street from the school, you know. You can go get her some candy, a pickle, or something.”

  “I don’t have time to take her to the candy lady. Plus, I don’t have any money on me. She can wait until our Pops comes to get her.” I looked at Nyla again and this time I bit down on my bottom lip and squenched my eyes so she’d know I meant business. “You betta shut up. I mean it too,” I told her.

  Right away Nyla stopped crying and started wiping the tears from off her face. I didn’t care about her crying; she wasn’t the only one who had to go without so she better get used to it.

  “You are so mean,” Daisha said as she started digging around in her purse. She pulled out a package of red Twizzlers and gave them to Nyla. “Here you go,” she said. “You can have these.” Daisha gave me a mean look but Daisha didn’t know my situation; nobody did.

  I rolled my eyes at Nyla when she looked up at me like she was asking if it was okay to take the candy.

  “You can have it,” I told her but I wasn’t nice about it.

  Nyla grabbed the candy out of Daisha’s hand and started grinning while she stuffed one of the twizzlers in her mouth.

  If I compare Sierra and Daisha, I would say that Daisha is way different from Sierra. Sierra is popular, always wants attention, and she’s super super smart. And of course, she’s pretty. Daisha, well, she isn’t as pretty as Sierra, not as smart, or popular like Sierra, but she’s still got it going on in her own way. Daisha is short and sorta chunky while Sierra has a shape that’s sic! Ooh, yeah, Sierra James is a piece of work. Let’s see what else: oh, yeah Daisha has short black hair, but I like it. She wears it in a curly natural style. Her skin is dark like chocolate, the total opposite of Sierra’s light beige skin. Daisha has been checked and teased about
her dark complexion, but she doesn’t let it get next to her. She acts like she’s proud of who she is and has no problem with what the other kids think. She has big shapely legs and her titties are nice too. I guess you can say there’s nothing about Daisha Ford that I don’t like. Well, there is one thing – she looks nothing like Rihanna. 

  Daisha wears eyeglasses and she always like to run up on somebody to try and scare them. Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I think I like Daisha but not as much as I like Sierra. But right now, I can’t do anything about either one of ‘em.

  Daisha said she has seven sisters and brothers, some older and some younger than her, so she’s used to kids being around, which is why I’m going to ask her to watch Nyla while I practice. Pops should be on the parking lot to get Nyla before I have to leave for my game, so I won’t have to deal with worrying about her while I’m trying to take the Fairley Bulldogs to a win.

  I could tell by the way he acted that Coach was still mad at me for bringing Nyla to practice, but at least Daisha was there too. After I told her my Pops was on his way, she agreed to watch her until he got there. Daisha was cool like that. Anybody else would be laughing at me for having my little sister tagging along, but not Daisha. That was one thing I really liked about her. She was always nice and I never heard her talk about anybody like a lot of the other kids did. Maybe having so many brothers and sisters made her like that: I don’t know; I was just glad she helped me out. Who knew life for a fourteen-year-old kid like me could be so tough. Oh, well, I guess it is what it is.

  Chapter 4

  I know Pops is trying, but I sure wish things would hurry up and change for us. There’s only so much room inside a Yukon. A lot of our clothes, along with a few blankets, a couple of sleeping bags, and a small chest that contained our personal items like toothbrush and deodorant, made it impossible to be comfortable, plus a whip is made for going from one place to the next, not to live in.

  I let my seat back as far as I could, but I was still cramped. My little sister was so close up on me, it looked like we were superglued together. But, I understood, because the blankets we had were hardly enough to keep us warm. We slept in our Wal-Mart foam jackets and I kept on two pairs of pants, two shirts and two or three pairs of socks to keep from freezing my butt off.

  And when Nyla has her crying spells, man, I tell you it’s like living in a nightmare. I guess Nyla cried because, like me, she was tired of having no place to call home. And with Pops being so secretive, and sometimes downright mean, I think it made things even harder on us. He warned us every day before we got dropped off at school not to tell anyone about what was going on. He told Nyla if she told anybody then mean people would come and take her away from him and she would never see him or me again. I don’t know how much of that was true, but I wasn’t about to take the chance, plus I was like Pops, I didn’t want anyone to know that he couldn’t afford a place for us to live.

  Thinking back over the last few years, naw, I’ll just say over the last three months, if somebody would have asked me if I could ever see myself living on the streets, I would have laughed in their face so quick that they wouldn’t have known what hit ‘em. Pops had been some kind of big time director at a manufacturing plant for almost twelve years when they up and fired him; and just like that, things started getting bad.

  Pops used to get a check every week from the state; but then it ran out and Pops couldn’t seem to catch a break after that. I think me and Nyla get a check every month because of Momz, and maybe that’s what Pops uses to help take care of everything, but I guess it isn’t enough because here we are - homeless. It all happened so fast. First, the lights in our apartment got cut off but Pops got them turned back on when he found work through one of those places that sends you out on jobs for a week, sometimes a little longer. But things still didn’t get any better. The lights got turned off again, and we couldn’t even afford cable anymore.

  And Momz, well it’s been three years since she bailed on us. No, I’m not talking about like getting on drugs, and she didn’t run off with some other guy or nothing like that, but sometimes I wish that was the case, because then I would still have a chance to see her every now and then. Naw, Momz died from a massive heart attack.

  I remember that day like it just happened. It was on a Monday, August 9, 2010. I was going to Lanier Middle School. When I got home from basketball practice, Momz and Nyla were in the kitchen. Pops was still at work. Momz had cooked a big pot of spaghetti and giant, round turkey meatballs, my favorite food. It was smelling so good up in there. I couldn’t wait to dive in and eat a big plateful, but we had to wait until Pops got home from work before we could eat. Momz liked for all of us to sit down and eat together.

  Momz was always about family. She used to say some corny stuff like, ‘Nyl, always remember that a family that prays together stays together.’ Just about every Sunday morning, she would wake me up and tell me to get ready for church. I used to hate it when she did that; I wanted to have at least one day where I could sleep late because most of my Saturdays I was involved in some kind of sports. When I was about Nyla’s age, they had me at the YMCA playing baseball, running track, and hooping.

  When I got in middle school I played basketball and ran track for the school. I tried football but I didn’t like it as much.

  Anyway, Momz and Pops used to take me and Nyla to church and that’s where I learned a lot of stuff about God. Some Sundays when I went to church it was fun because I had friends I hung out with, but all of that seemed like a long time ago now; and we hadn’t been to church since Momz died.

  The day she died, we had just finished eating dinner, and I was rinsing the dishes to get them ready to put in the dishwasher. All of a sudden, I heard a loud noise; like somebody had dropped a bomb or something in our house. I dropped the glass I was holding when I heard Pops yelling Momz’ name. He was hollering, “Lillian, Lillian.”

  I ran out the kitchen and saw Momz laying in the middle of the family room floor next to the sofa. Pops was leaning over her and Nyla was in the corner having a first class crying fit. I didn’t know what to do; I couldn’t move.

  “Get the phone!” Pops yelled. I still couldn’t move. The second time he yelled at me, I ran and got the phone and brought it to Pops. He called 911. I started crying and kneeled down next to my Momz.

  “Momz, wake up, please, wake up,” I yelled too. She didn’t move.

  “Mommy, Mommy,” I could hear Nyla screaming and crying. “What’s wrong with Mommy?”

  Pops started doing CPR on her but she was turning purple. Boy, was I scared. Nyla was still crying too and everything was crazy. Momz wasn’t moving or saying a word. I saw tears pouring from Pops eyes and he kept begging her to wake up.

  When the ambulance got there, Pops ran and opened the door and then everything seemed like a big blur because I didn’t remember much after that. All I know is Pops wouldn’t let me ride with him in the ambulance. I can understand him not letting Nyla ride because she was just a four year old little girl, but why couldn’t I go? I wasn’t a baby; I was eleven years old. Anyway, Pops made us go next door to Mr. and Mrs. Tillman’s house. They were standing outside watching as they put Momz in the ambulance and drove off.

  Mr. Tillman took me to the hospital later that night. On the way, he talked to me about God, telling me stuff like God can do anything; that God was taking care of Momz and for me not to worry. I never understood how he could tell me not to worry when there was something wrong with my Momz. How would he have liked it if Mrs. Tillman had hurt herself like my momz? I wonder if he would be talking about God then.

  When we got to the hospital, I saw Pops. He looked really sad. He pulled me to the side and that’s when everything, and I do mean everything, in my life changed. He told me Momz didn’t make it. Didn’t make it? At first I didn’t know what he was talking about. Didn’t make it where? She was at the hospital, so what did he mean she didn’t make it? Pops finally had to break down and just tel
l me that Momz had died. I freaked out. I ran up and down the hospital hallways screaming and yelling like I was a little boy.

  “I can’t believe it. Momz is gone. She’s gone; she’s gone,” I remember saying. “Come back, Momz.”

  I took off running; I didn’t know where I was going. I fell to my knees yelling, “God, why did you take my mom away?” Mr. Tillman came after me and took hold of me. I fought against him. I didn’t want him to touch me. I didn’t want anyone but Momz.

  “I know you’re upset; and it’s okay. You can cry. You can be mad. God understands,” Mr. Tillman tried to calm me down.

  “I don’t want God to understand; I want my Momz back. I want her back now.” But little did I know that I would never have my Momz again.

  That day I was a little eleven-year-old boy whose mom had decided she didn’t want to be with us anymore. At least that’s how I felt back then. And where was God? Where was the God Momz used to teach me about? Where was the God Mr. Tillman had just told me could do anything? Why did this happen?

  The next days, weeks, I don’t know months, maybe years, I never felt the same. I was mad; real mad. I didn’t want to say it out loud but I used to think about why it had to be my Momz that died. Why couldn’t it have been somebody else’s Mom? Why my mom? She was thirty-one years old. The doctors told Pops that she was really, really young to have a heart attack. Well, if that was the case then why was she dead? Aren’t doctors supposed to heal sick people? Why couldn’t they save her? Pops said that the doctors said she had something wrong with her heart, some kind of defect that made her have a massive heart attack. Pops didn’t know about it and I guess neither did Momz.

  At the funeral, seeing my her laying in a casket was the hardest thing I had to do in my life. I felt like jumping in the casket with her. Even now, I can’t stand to think about it. I miss her so much; and I can tell Pops does too because ever since she died, he hasn’t been the same. It’s like he lost a part of himself when she died. I understood, although I was only eleven at the time, I felt like I was dead, just like Momz.