Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks by Lauren Myracle

Author:Lauren Myracle
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group US

The first house we go to is in Cabbage Town. I’ve heard of Cabbage Town, but it’s a part of Atlanta I’ve never been to. The houses are small and crowded, and there are a lot of mom-and-pop liquor stores. We pass a billboard advertising Dark and Lovely Hair Relaxer, and Chuck punches Owen’s shoulder.

“Need some hair relaxer, dude?”

“Shit, dude, I’ll relax her,” Owen replies, meaning the billboard model who is dark-skinned and voluptuous. He lowers his voice to a put-on growl. “I like my women black, like my coffee.”

Chuck laughs, and I’m mortified. I feel Vonzelle stiffen beside me, and I don’t know what to do. Challenge them? Tell them they’re being jerks? They’re juniors. They don’t even know my name.

“Y’all, hush,” Lydia says.

Owen twists around from the front seat and says, “Excuse me?”

Lydia jerks her eyes at Vonzelle, and Owen says, “Oh, sorry. My bad.”

Chuck cracks up more.

“Dude,” Owen says, as if reprimanding him. But he doesn’t care. Neither of them cares. They’re too busy being hilarious.

“They’re idiots,” Lydia says to Vonzelle. “Ignore them.”

“Oh, I will,” Vonzelle says.

I try to make eye contact with her, to say without words that they are idiots, and that honestly, I’m fine being in the same group as she is. There were just other factors at play.

She holds her spine straight and stares out the window.

Every house we go to, the families are black. Maybe I should have expected it, but I didn’t. It makes me fidget.

One little boy we visit is named Terrell. “Like the football player,” he tells us, but I don’t know who he’s talking about since I don’t know football. He grins hugely when Lydia gives him his stocking.

“For me?” he asks. “The whole thing?”

“Don’t you open it now, Terrell,” says an older woman I’m guessing is his grandmom. She’s sitting in an armchair with a McDon ald’s bag on her lap. The air smells like french fries. “You save it, you hear?”

“Well, y’all have a merry Christmas,” Lydia says. She pats Terrell’s head. “Blessings to you, cutie.”

“What do you say?” prods Terrell’s grandmom.

“Thank you,” Terrell recites, his smile lighting up the room.

Back in the Hummer, Lydia goes on about Terrell and how adorable he was.

“He is going to be a heartbreaker one day,” she says. “I just wanted to wrap him up and take him home with me.” She launches into a story about some friends of her parents who adopted a little black boy who was just as adorable as Terrell, only at first the parents didn’t know how to deal with his hair.

“Because you can’t just wash it, right, Vonzelle?” she says. “You have to use, like, oils and stuff. Right?”

I look at Vonzelle apologetically, but Vonzelle appears unruffled.

“Not for an infant,” she says. “For an infant, plain old baby shampoo is good—just not more than once a week.”

“Okay,” Lydia says. “I mean, I probably won’t adopt a black baby, but you never know.” She fishes through one of the undelivered stockings and pulls out a Hershey’s Kiss.

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