Keesha's House Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for buying this

  Square Fish ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Please note that poem formatting is best represented on your device at smaller text sizes.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  STEPHIE—pregnant, trying to make the right decisions for herself and those she cares about

  JASON—Stephie’s boyfriend, torn between his responsibility to Stephie and the baby and the promise of a college basketball career

  DONTAY—in foster care while his parents are in prison, feeling unwanted both inside and outside the system

  CARMEN—arrested on a DUI charge, waiting in a juvenile detention center for a judge to hear her case

  HARRIS—disowned by his father after disclosing that he’s gay, living in his car and taking care of himself

  KATIE—angry at her mother’s loyalty to an abusive stepfather, losing herself in long hours of work and school

  KEESHA—struggling to find a way to take care of herself and protect her younger brother after her father kicks her out

  Dedicated with love

  to my sister

  Barbara

  PART I

  HOW I SEE IT

  NOW THIS BABY STEPHIE

  My parents still think I’m their little girl.

  I don’t want them to see me getting bigger,

  bigger every week, almost too big to hide it now.

  But if I don’t go home, where can I go?

  Jason said, You could get rid of it. I thought of how he tossed

  the broken condom in the trash, saying, Nothing

  will happen. Now this baby is that nothing,

  growing fingers in the dark, growing toes, a girl

  or boy, heart pulsing. Not something to be tossed

  aside, not nothing. Love and terror both grow bigger

  every day inside me. Jason showed me where to go

  to take care of it. I looked at him and said, I can’t. Now

  he isn’t talking to me, and if he won’t talk now,

  I know what to expect in six months’ time—nothing.

  His family doesn’t know about the baby. When I used to go

  there every day, his mom would say, It’s nice to have a girl

  around the house. But they have bigger

  dreams than this for Jason. All my questions are like wind-tossed

  papers in the street, and after they’ve been tossed

  around, rain comes, and they’re a soggy mess. Now

  I’m hungry. I had a doughnut, but I need a bigger

  meal. I’m not prepared for this. I know nothing

  about living on my own. At school there’s this girl

  I know named Keesha who told me there’s a place kids go

  and stay awhile, where people don’t ask questions. I go,

  Yeah, sure, okay. I kind of tossed

  my head, like I was just some girl

  who wouldn’t care. But now

  I wish I’d asked her the exact address. (Nothing

  wrong with asking.) To lots of girls, it’s no big

  deal to have a baby. They treat it like a big

  attention getter—when the baby’s born, they go

  around showing it off to all their friends. But nothing

  like this ever happens in my family. Mom and Dad won’t toss

  me out, or even yell at me, if I go home right now.

  But how can I keep acting like the girl

  they think I am—a carefree teenage girl with nothing

  big to worry me. As for what I’ve started thinking now—

  don’t go there. Heads is bad; tails is worse: like that no-win coin toss.

  WHAT’S RIGHT? JASON

  Coach keeps asking me what’s wrong.

  I missed the free throw, cost our team the game.

  I thought I could count on you, he said,

  quiet, really puzzled, those dark eyes steady,

  looking through me. How can I say, Forget

  the championship, forget the scholarship, college

  is out of the question? And without college—

  what? You want to know what’s wrong?

  I want to know what’s right. I can’t forget

  Stephie’s eyes, the light through her tears. The old game

  plan won’t work now. Are you two going steady?

  Coach asked. He was serious. He said,

  She’s a lovely girl, Jason. All I can say

  is, times have changed. In his day, you went to college,

  married the lovely girl you’d gone steady

  with for four years. Nothing went wrong

  like this. I wish I could play the game

  like that. I wish I could forget

  about this baby. But I can’t forget

  the night it happened. Stephie said

  she loved watching me play in the big game;

  she loved the brains that got me into college,

  but there was more than that. I was wrong

  if I thought that was all she saw in me. Steady

  light in her eyes. I want to be steady

  for her now. But I’m not. I can’t. Forget

  it. It’s all turning out wrong.

  When I drove her past the clinic, she said,

  You want me to kill our baby so you can go to college,

  play basketball, be a big hero in every big game?

  Those words: Kill our baby. No. This is not a game.

  I need some kind of job, a steady

  income. I could stay here and go to college

  part-time, but I’d have to forget

  about my basketball career. Whoever said

  these are the best years of your life was wrong.

  But Stephie’s also wrong. I don’t think everything’s a game.

  I just can’t seem to say, Yes, I’ll be the kind of steady

  father I should be. It’s hard to forget about college.

  I FOUND A PLACE KEESHA

  Stephie walked by this afternoon, holding

  her umbrella in front of her face.

  When it rains like this, all day, into the night,

  that’s when you need a home

  more than you need your pride. She still

  goes home to her folks, but she’s scared

  of something. I can tell when someone’s scared

  and I can usually guess what it’s about. She’s been holding

  her books in front of herself, and she still

  wears that heavy jacket, even when the weather’s good. Her face

  clouds over whenever it’s time to go home.

  She’ll go home again tonight, but one night

  soon, she’ll find her way here. Just watch—Sunday night

  or a week from Tuesday, she’ll show up scared,

  like she’s the first girl that ever ran from home.

  I know how it is. The night I ran off, holding

  on to my picture of Mama, like her face

  could talk to me or something, I still

  b
elieved someone would come after me. I still

  thought the cops or somebody would look for me all night,

  and Dad would say he didn’t mean it. His face

  when I left, so tight and dark. I’m scared

  when his eyes flash like that—Don’t come back. Holding

  his bottle like a gun. What would a real home

  be like? An everybody-sit-down-at-the-table home?

  I remember when Mama was still

  alive, sitting on that brown couch holding

  Tobias. He had an earache, he cried all night,

  and she stayed up and tried to quiet him. She was scared

  of Dad. I remember his face,

  so angry when one of us cried. And her face,

  softer when he wasn’t home.

  I’m never going to live like that, scared

  of what a man will do to me. I’m still

  in school. I found a place to sleep at night,

  and I’m smart. You won’t see me holding

  a baby anytime soon. I’m still trying to hold

  my own life together. I face each night

  by calling this place home. No one’s going to see me acting scared.

  HOW I SEE IT DONTAY

  They’ll be sayin’ I ran

  off, but that ain’t how I see it. To me—

  I went to Carmen’s house

  where all my friends chill out,

  and when I called home for a ride,

  my foster dad said, You got there on your own, son;

  you should be able to get home. They call me son

  like that. But if I was, they’d run

  out in that fancy car and give me a ride

  when I need one. It ain’t no home to me.

  It look like one, sittin’ on that green lawn, out

  in the suburbs. My caseworker say, This house

  has everything. Four bedrooms, three baths, the house

  of your dreams. Sound like she sellin’ it. Their real son

  has a bathroom to hisself, and a sign that says KEEP OUT

  on his door. He got the whole crib on lock, runnin’

  the whole show. But me—

  I feel like I’m beggin’ if I ask for a ride.

  I hafta ask if I can eat! I got a ride

  home last Thursday, and when I went in, the house

  was quiet. They was all done eatin’, nothin’ left for me.

  My foster mom said, Sorry, son,

  you need to learn, if you want to run

  around with those kids, and stay out

  past suppertime, you can’t expect us to go out

  of our way to feed you. Where they live, you need a ride

  to go get food. You can’t just run

  to the corner for a sandwich or go to a friend’s house

  and eat with them. Carmen’s grandmama call me son

  too, sometimes, but if I’m hungry at their house, she’ll feed me.

  So now I don’t know what to do. It’s gonna look like me

  messin’ up again. But to me—they locked me out!

  If I had my own key like their son,

  I coulda got in last night when I finally got a ride

  from Carmen. It was midnight, and the house

  was dark. Carmen thought I’d gone inside. I tried to run

  and catch her, but she didn’t see me standin’ out

  there in the dark street—no house, no food, no ride.

  I didn’t run off. I shivered in the backyard, waitin’ for the sun.

  SOME LITTLE THING CARMEN

  I’ll be sixteen in seven months,

  and I know how to drive.

  When Dontay had to find his own ride home,

  Grandmama was asleep. I know where she keeps

  her keys. I borrowed them and drove as careful as I could

  out to that house he’s stayin’ at. By the time I left

  him off, it was after curfew. I turned left

  on Main Street, thinkin’ ’bout the time we all got stopped last month

  in that same place, thinkin’ I could

  go a different way. Shoulda done that, but I thought I’d drive

  that short way, take my chances. Tried to keep

  an eye out, but I got stopped before I made it home.

  That is, to Grandmama’s house—what I call home

  since Mama and her boyfriend left

  for Cincinnati. I keep

  thinkin’ she’ll be back, but it’s five months

  now, and I’ve about stopped hopin’ she’ll drive

  up any minute. I guess it could

  happen—prob’ly won’t, but could.

  Anyhow, for now, Grandmama’s house is home.

  Or was until she woke up to flashin’ lights and saw the cops drive

  up. They gave her back her keys, told her I was DUI. Left

  me handcuffed in their car tryin’ not to cry. I’ll prob’ly get two months

  this time. Don’t know why I keep

  on gettin’ in this kind of trouble. I keep

  tryin’ to do right—thought I could

  help out with this month’s

  rent. Now it looks like I won’t be home

  or makin’ any kind of money for a while. I’ll miss what’s left

  of school, or at least too much to make up. This could drive

  you crazy: Just try to do some little thing like drive

  a friend that needs a ride, and you keep

  findin’ yourself locked up, nothin’ left

  to do but sit around thinkin’ how you could

  be out with friends—or home.

  You think about that stuff for months,

  and when those months are finally over, everything you left

  behind is different. You feel like jumpin’ in the nearest car and drivin’

  outta town, keepin’ goin’ till you find someplace that feels like home.

  THAT ONE WORD HARRIS

  I got invited to the winter dance.

  Think how that’s supposed to be: Mom, Dad,

  there’s someone I’d like you to meet,

  someone special in my life, someone

  who loves me as much as I love him.

  Freeze frame on that one word: Did you say

  him? I used to try to think of how I’d say

  it, how I’d let them know there’d be no dancing

  at my wedding, no grandkids. Finally I just told them about him

  and watched my world explode. What it meant to Dad

  was that he didn’t know me. I turned into someone

  he’s hated all his life. He wouldn’t meet

  my friend. Why would I want to meet

  the person who ruined your life? I couldn’t say,

  No, Dad, I ruined his. They couldn’t imagine just someone

  I loved who loved me. Now Mom and Dad and I can’t dance

  around the subject like we used to. Dad

  said if I didn’t have enough respect for him

  to act normal, how could I expect him

  to keep supporting me? I couldn’t meet

  his eyes when he said that. I was ashamed of Dad

  and myself at the same time. I didn’t say

  much, but after that, the winter dance

  seemed like a childish game. Overnight, I became someone

  different—older, tougher, on my own. Someone—

  me—with no parents to support him.

  I was scared enough to ask a girl to the dance,

  thinking I could bring her home to meet

  my parents. Maybe they’d let me come back. I’d say,

  It was just something I went through—really, Dad,

  it isn’t true. But she said no. Anyway, Dad

  would never have believed me. I can’t pretend to be someone

  I’m not. No matter what Mom might say

  (and she’s not saying much), to him

  I might as well be dead. There’s just n
o way to meet

  halfway on this. I didn’t go to the dance.

  What made me think I could have danced with him

  in public? Now I can’t even say his name out loud. Dad

  scared me into breaking up. I don’t even want to meet someone.

  MY CHOICE KATIE

  I sleep in my sleeping bag in a room

  with a lock in the basement of the place

  on Jackson Street. And I feel safe.

  If Keesha wants to talk to me, she knocks

  first, and if I want to let her in, I do.

  If I don’t, I don’t. It’s my choice.

  There’s not too much I really have a choice

  about. Mom would say I chose to leave my room

  at home, but that’s not something anyone would do

  without a real good reason. There’s no place

  for me there since she got married. Like, one time, I knocked

  her husband’s trophy off his gun safe,

  and he twisted my arm—hard. I never feel safe

  when he’s around. I finally asked my mom to make a choice:

  him or me. She went, Oh, Katie, he’ll be fine. Then she knocked

  on our wood table. I blew up. I stormed out of the room

  and started thinking hard. In the first place,

  I know he won’t be fine. I didn’t tell her what he tries to do

  to me when she works late. In a way, I want to, but even if I do,

  she won’t believe me. She thinks we’re safe

  in that so-called nice neighborhood. Finally, Katie, a place

  of our own. And since she took a vow, she thinks she has no choice

  but to see her marriage through. No room

  for me, no vow to protect me if he comes knocking

  on my door late at night. He knocks

  and then walks in when I don’t answer. Or even when I do

  answer: Stay out! This is my room

  and you can’t come in! I could never be safe

  there, with him in the house. So, sure, I made a choice.

  I left home and found my way to this place,

  where I’ve been these past two weeks. And I found a place

  to work, thirty hours a week. Today Mom knocked

  on the door here. She wanted to talk. I told her, You made your choice;

  I made mine. She wondered what she could do