“What happened!” Cassandra yelled. “What the fuck happened!”
“That guy got rough with me,” Melanie managed to say.
“Who?” Cassandra said. “Who was it?”
A young man followed them out of the house. “It was all a misunderstandin,” he said.
“Was it you, you sonofabitch!” Cassandra grabbed his throat and squeezed. “You try to rape my friend?” The guy was able only to shake his head before Wesley took her arm, held it. “Lady, please don’t do that. He my cousin,” Wesley said.
“I don’t give three fucks who he is!” Cassandra said. She began to struggle, but he held both her arms and the more he held her, the calmer she became. Whatever had been in his eyes before Melanie screamed was there no more and she would have given her arms to have it back.
“It wasn’t him. It was Roger,” a girl said from inside. “He been drinkin too much.”
“Yeah,” Melanie said, “it was that Roger. He got rough. Too rough.”
Wesley called for Roger to come explain himself, but someone said Roger had run out the back door. The three girls helped Melanie into the car. Wesley asked her if she needed anything and she shook her head. Then, all the while looking at Cassandra, he stood with his hands in his back pockets beside the little boy as Cassandra started up the car, which purred into life on the first try. They did not say good-bye.
“That was a close call. Another lesson learned,” Melanie said after they had gone a few blocks. Anita had given her her sweater and Melanie was buttoning it. “This blouse is ruined, though. He’d be a real nice guy if he wasn’t so rough. Should learn to treat a woman like a lady. But he was cute.”
“You know,” Cassandra said, “I’m fuckin tired of all your talk about somebody bein cute all the time. You gettin on my nerves with that shit! You sound like a damn cuckoo clock with just one tune!” For the next two blocks or so she pounded on the horn and rocked her head in exasperation. “You know how many girls pull down their panties and give up the booty just cause some boy is cute! Just cause some boy has some shitty good hair! Just cause somebody has the best rap in the whole damn world! And you, you the leader of them all, Melanie!” Melanie slumped back in her seat. “Thas why nothin ain’t right no more,” Cassandra continued, “cause some dumb bitch like you think this dick-head and that dick-head is so cute! Get some brains, girl! I get so sick and tired of you!”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Cassandra.”
“That’s your trouble: You never mean anything by it.” She turned to look at Melanie. “And if you had any sense, you’d dump that dick-head Dwayne. He’s the dumbest thing in the world, but he playin you for eighty-nine kinds of fool. But you won’t see that cause he’s sooooo cute.”
“Stop the car,” Melanie said calmly. “Just stop the car right now. I wanna get out.” She began jerking on the door handle. “Stop the car, I said!”
“Don’t tell me what to do! Nobody tells me what to do!”
“I really wanna get out, Cassandra,” Melanie said, moving the handle up and down. “Why do you hate me so much? What have I ever done to you in my whole life to make you hate me so much?” She began to cry. “What harm did I ever do you, thas what I wanna know. Why you against me just because I’m in love with Dwayne? What bad thing I ever did to you in my whole life, Cassandra?”
Melanie got the door open and Cassandra braked. Melanie stumbled out into the street and made her way to the sidewalk. Anita and Gladys followed her. Melanie, first thinking it was Cassandra, pushed Gladys when she put her arm around her shoulders. Anita walked on her other side. Cassandra followed them slowly in the car as the three went down 8th Street. She could not hear what they were saying, but she could see Melanie shaking her head no no no.
At 8th and H streets, the girls stopped and Cassandra, after waiting for the light, turned the car around and parked at the corner, ignoring the NO PARKING sign. Anita, walking backward to face Melanie, held her by the shoulders, and she and Gladys said things that made Melanie look Anita directly in the eye. Little by little Melanie calmed down and stopped crying. She nodded her head once, but Cassandra could see that it was not the yes to get back in the car. She watched them go into the Mile Long at the corner and saw them order sodas and stand at the counter and drink them.
Cassandra wanted a cigarette, but she hadn’t the will to open the glove compartment and pull one from the pack. Across 8th Street a drunk was dancing with the wobbliness of a puppet. Just as he seemed about to fall, his legs collapsing, he would straighten himself and dance around the two little boys who were watching him, then his legs would give out again and the boys would reach out to catch him. The boys’ mother, waiting for a bus, ignored the drunk. Cassandra watched the girls drink the sodas as if they had all the rest of their lives to do it. Gradually, Melanie began to smile, but she continued to hold her soda with both hands. Melanie did not seem to be saying anything, only listening to what the other two said. Serve the bitches right if I take off and leave them here. But Cassandra did not leave, and when the bus came and took the mother and her boys away, she began to worry that the drunk would spot her and come over and dance and make her the center of attention.
Anita was the first to return to the car. “I thought you might have left us,” she said, handing Cassandra a soda.
“It never crossed my mind to do that,” Cassandra said. She set the soda between her legs and did not open it.
“Sure it did,” Anita said. “You were thinkin about what our faces would look like when we got out here and found we didn’t have a ride back to Northwest.” She sat facing Cassandra, her left arm over the back of the seat. “You sat here thinkin how good it would feel to ride off and leave us stranded. You know how I know? Cause I woulda been thinkin the same thing.” She opened the glove compartment and took a cigarette from the pack, stuck it in Cassandra’s mouth, and lit the cigarette. “Probably dyin for one a these, I bet.” Cassandra inhaled and blew smoke out of the side of her mouth. Cassandra looked directly ahead, and then, after she had inhaled again, she closed her eyes with relief. Anita unwrapped a straw and stuck it through the plastic top of the soda cup.
In a few minutes, Melanie got in the back with Gladys. No one said anything until they were well out of Northeast. Gladys asked Melanie to sing something, but Melanie said she wasn’t in the mood for no song.
“Well, what about you, Anita?” Gladys said. “What you feel like hearin, Melanie? ‘My Guy’?” Melanie said nothing. “What about you, Cassandra? What happened to the party we was supposed to have? Anita, how bout ‘Will You Still Love Me’?”
“It’s called ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow.’” Cassandra said.
“I hear the money going down in the jukebox,” Anita said. “Kerchink, ker-chink.” Anita sang:
Tonight you’re mine completely;
You give your love so sweetly.
“I’d pay a quarter for that,” Gladys said.
Anita sang:
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow?
“I’d pay a hundred bucks,” Cassandra said and honked the horn.
Anita sang:
Tonight with words unspoken
you say that I’m the only one
But will my heart be broken
when the night meets the morning sun?
That was how they went the rest of the way home.