Life Is Funny by E. R. Frank

Author:E. R. Frank
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

Year Five

Gingerbread

Keisha

Drew

DeShawn

Mara

Tory

Nick

Ebony

Grace

China

Sonia

Carl

Mattie

Elaine

Gingerbread

I GOT A round head, and round eyes, and a round nose and little bitty ears, and sunset skin, and they call me Gingerbread because that’s what I look like: a gingerbread cookie man, and I don’t care. I got hyper blood and bad concentration and I got to take my riddle-in every day, but I don’t care. I got a crackhead mother somewhere on this earth, or maybe dead, but I don’t care because I got my real mama and my real daddy since my little gingerbread face came into this place. My mama is white and my daddy is black, and fools try to make shit out of that, and I don’t care.

“You act like you popped right out of a cereal box,” Keisha tells me the first week of tenth grade, and I smile my gingerbread smile at her pretty self, and she laughs and laughs the way people do, and I love being here on this earth.

“He’s a virgin,” my friend DeShawn lets her know, and I don’t care.

“So am I, fool. What’s your problem?” Keisha tells him, but I see the flicker behind her eye, and I care, because I’m what my mama calls “sensitive.” And so is my mama. She had me washing my own clothes and sheets as soon as I turned eleven, and at the time I was mad, and a couple months later I was glad because the joy of a boy was messing up cotton like you’ve never seen, and that shit isn’t for your mama.

“You want to chill later?” I ask Keisha.

She goes, “I have to pick up my cousin right after eighth period. How about later after school?”

And I go, “Cool.”

* * *

My daddy gets home right when I do, as usual. He trades stocks on Wall Street, and they start at the crack of day and finish the same time as teachers, maybe even earlier.

“I met an important girl,” I tell him, and he tosses our basketball to my chest.

“You ditching me?” he asks, and I smile and smile.

He helps me get my homework done first, which is hard because I’m always wanting to get up and look around and tap my pencil on the table and jitter my feet on the floor and sing a tune, and it’s hard, but my daddy helps me. Fifteen minutes of math, five of ball out back, fifteen minutes of English, five of ball out back, fifteen minutes of social studies, and I’ve got a hard-on the size of a baseball bat. Oh, please, Daddy, I hope you can’t see that. It’s time to go meet Keisha, but I want to jerk off, but then I’ll miss her at McDonald’s, oh, Daddy, what do I do with this thing, and thinking about Keisha just makes it poke up worse.

“You got money?” my daddy asks, even though he’s not supposed to because I get my allowance once a week on Sunday nights.

“I’m telling Mama,” I joke him while he throws

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