Sweet Thang by Allison Whittenberg

Author:Allison Whittenberg [Whittenberg, Allison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49815-1
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2006-07-28T16:00:00+00:00

“You're not going to get Demetrius. You're not gonna get anyone, as black as you are.”

I knew the nasal, harping voice even before I looked up.

“He belongs to me,” Dinah said.

“Girls.” Our self-sustained silent reading teather clapped her hands.

Dinah made like she was walking back to her desk, but then she added, “Besides, he doesn't like girls With flat chests.”

Dinah was really talking out of her neck on that one. I Iradri't seen her together with Demetrius since I'd gone over to his house the first time. Nevertheless, Demetrius gave me few signs of intimacy. But he sure kept piling on the homework. The only thing he was doing himself was his Spanish, since I was studying French. Still, I got to sit next to him on the patio, sipping a cola that the maid had fetched.

Demetrius sipped Mello Yello. “My dad likes you. He thinks you're wholesome.”

“What do you think of me, Demetrius?” I asked.

“You're pretty smart.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that's about it.”

I frowned and changed the subject, asking Demetrius about the Maryland license plate on his father's Japanese car.

“We moved from Baltimore.”

“Does your mother still live there?”

“My mother died in a car accident when I was fourteen months old,” he told me.

“I'm so sorry.” I took his hand. “Do you remember her?”

“Not at all.”

I thought, I hope Tracy John remembers Auntie Karyn.

“He got remarried. Nurses shouldn't marry doctors.” He spoke as smoothly as he always did.

“My auntie was a nurse,” I said.

“He was only married a year or two. The judge awarded him custody.”

“You went to court?” I cringed slightly. I'd thought that only white people went to court over their children.

“Yeah, the judge thought it would be better if we stuck together.”

“Well, that's good.”

“I don't care,” he said, grinding his words, making them seem trivial.

“Yes, you do,” I insisted. “Basil's your brother.”

“Half brother, and no, I don't care. He should have stayed with his mother down in Baltimore. Dad doesn't have time for him. He wants to make head of surgery within the next few years.”

“Still, what about you and Basil? Don't you ever sit with him and go over his homework?”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, come on. I'm not his legal guardian.”

I grinned. Who was I talking to? Demetrius didn't even want to do his own homework.

• • •

Ma was totally against peewee football. She said it was too rough and Tracy John was too little. Tracy John begged and begged and begged to be on the team like Basil was. It's a funny thing about even the most stringent parents; you ask them for something one hundred or so tittle and miraculously, they change their minds. Ma conceded that Tracy John could be in the club, but upon his first scratch, he'd be out.

Practice took Tracy John away from me on a consistent basis. One rainy day, however, I found myself home wit;h him, and my patience was short. I was unused to him sitting; at the table and to having to get him things.

“I want an apple,” he told me.

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