It Aint All For Nothin by Walter Dean Myers

Author:Walter Dean Myers
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780061975004
Publisher: HarperCollins

10

I didn’t have nothing to do so I went over to see Denise. I was thinking about going downtown and look for Frank but I didn’t think I could find him. I thought Denise would be home and I bought two bottles of Dr Pepper and took them to her place.

“Hi, Tippy.” She said it so low I could hardly hear her, and I figured she was sad. She was sad a lot, I thought, even when nothing too bad was happening to her. When she was with Bubba she was kind of happy, but then he would get to talking to Lonnie and Stone and either drinking or smoking herb and Denise would just sit around and wait until Bubba told her to go home.

I opened the Dr Peppers and we sat around and watched television for a while. Denise’s television was old and the picture was always fuzzy. The only thing that helped a little was if you hung a wire coat hanger from the antenna or if you stood about two feet away from it, on the right side.

“Guess what?” Denise looked over at me.

“What?”

“I’m gonna have a baby.” She looked over at me like she wanted to see what I thought about it. Then she looked away.

Almost everything in Denise’s place was green. The walls was light green and the drapes was dark green with pictures of swans on them. One time when I was at her house I drew the swans from the drapes and she made a big deal of it.

“Bubba gonna be the father,” Denise said.

“You glad?”

“I don’t know.” She was wearing dungarees and she got up and pulled the pants legs down a little and then sat back down. “Sometimes I’m glad and sometimes I’m not glad.”

“Is Bubba glad?”

“He’s glad,” Denise said, “but he don’t want to get married.”

“How come?”

“He said if we get married then he’ll get tied down and everything. He said he’ll give the baby his name, though.”

“Bubba?”

“No, Vann, that’s his last name.”

“You want to get married?”

She didn’t say nothing and I figured she did. I had heard a lot about people having babies and things and getting on welfare. I asked her when she was going to the hospital.

“I might not even go,” she said. “Sometimes they have the baby at home with the father.”

“In the house?”

“Yeah,” she said. “You wanna come?”

“No.”

“Why not, then you can practice on being a father,” she said, smiling. “Then when you and your old lady have a baby you can just pop it on out!”

“Get out of here.” I balled up the bag that the Dr Peppers was in and threw it at her, and she caught it and threw it back at me, except she missed by a lot. “Bubba going to be here when you have it and all?”

“Sure, he the daddy, ain’t he? I might have a whole party with all my friends. Then when the baby come out she gonna think this a whole cool world.”

“You make too

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