If Wishes Were Obfuscation Codes and Other Stories by Malon Edwards

Author:Malon Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fireside Fiction Company
Published: 2023-03-15T04:00:00+00:00

When Raf Used to be Ghetto

For about an hour, I’m genuinely polite to Ms. Edna Mae Hamilton. She’d always been my favorite babysitter, even if she smelled a little bit like lanolin. Last week, Mama told me she wanted to stay sharp, so she’s studying Mandarin. At seventy-five years young today, I say to her, “Go ’head wit your bougie-level grammarin’!”

Now, some of y’all might think I’m insulting her or finding fault with her, but that’s just me exalting her and maybe even forming a cult for her. And for good reason.

When Ms. Edna Mae looked after me, she taught me with exceptional alchemy her mastery of how to scramble eggs with a pinch of salt, pepper, and pure rhapsody. To this day, that’s the only thing I can cook quite happily, and if I may say so myself, passably.

So, I’m cool with being at her birthday party, in all actuality. Even when she hugs me and kisses me and tells me how handsome I be, and how I should not tease my four stepsisters, please, and how she will shatter my stepfather’s knees with a sledgehammer forged beneath all Seven Seas, which she will swing with strength and the greatest of ease, so he better treat my mother like the Queen of All Bees and start by taking her for at least two weeks in Belize.

My stepfather is in the kitchen, so we all know he heard that. But in case he didn’t, Ms. Edna Mae will Blurb that. I keep quiet because I don’t want to disturb that. Oh, shit, here we go; my stepfather responds and chirps that.

I’m not ready for Ms. Edna Mae’s TruTell petty, so I go out to the porch where me and my boys can mean-mug stock images for Getty.

What? Don’t look at me like I’m speaking Yeti. We all know they got sat-cams high up over the Serengeti moving around the world seventy-two times faster than the great Mario Andretti.

The first person I see is E. We knock shoulders hard enough to break boulders ensconced wit four-leaf clovers and change the formation of the White Cliffs of Dover.

“Sup, yo.” He gives me a pound.

I look around to see who came down for Ms. Edna Mae’s Birthday Get Down—one, two, three—I frown. They all here, except for that class clown, who been passed down by the Black Gowns since sundown at Fun Town. He know who I’m talkin’ ‘bout.

“Where Reese at?” I ask them.

“Tryin’ to get him some pussy,” Big Sherm says, feelin’ no shame to blast him.

“Try is all he gon’ do,” Pretty Boy Blue adds, well on his quest to drag him.

We all laugh. Reese our boy, but that don’t mean we can’t slag him.

“From who?” I ask, genuinely wonderin’ who would shag him. Pro’lly that quiet girl who always like to TruTell tag him.

“That bougie redbone ’round the corner on Crandon who parents tryin’ to gentrify The Manor but ain’t gettin’ nowhere,” Nate says, an’ pantomime referee-flags him.

“Bougie-ass Naëma?” I ask him, tryin’ not to laugh ’cause he got bad breath so bad she gon’ have to gas mask him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.