Read Online Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bro by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc - Free Book Online

sounded like jealousy, as if they wanted their dire predictions to come true. They seemed eager for the girl to lose what made her powerful. If older girls and women were supposed to have the knowledge and teach girls about love, the way they went about it wasn’t right. Coco noticed such discrepancies.

    Cesar thought Coco sounded like a challenge, and he loved challenges. His friends were always daring him to do crazy things. Once, to Rocco’s great amusement, Cesar had undressed at the dry cleaner’s and walked home, along Tremont, in his underwear. Cesar already had a way with women—real women (his mother’s friends), young women (Jessica’s friends), and girls his age. He varied his approach—from nice guy to bully—depending upon the girl. He bet B.J. $100 that he could have sex with Coco within two weeks: her panties would be the proof. And although he had never even spoken to her, Cesar promised B.J. that Coco would deliver the evidence herself.
    Freed from school one afternoon, Coco and Dorcas headed for the bodega on Andrews Avenue. Coco had her black hair pulled up severely, with a dollop of Vaseline on her bangs to tame the curl, and two lollipops stuck in her ponytail. Her skin shone. She used Vaseline as a moisturizer, but also to protect her from scarring if she got into a fight. Conspicuous signs of wear were shaming in the ghetto, which was partly why Coco liked her clothes neat and new. “That was one thing, my mother always tried to keep us in style,” Coco recalled. She preferred shirts that exposed her midriff, and tight pants or short-shorts that showed off her thighs. The pants in style were called chewing gums because they stretched. Foxybought Coco a pair in every color—blue, red, green, yellow, black, and pink. Foxy got a 30 percent discount on everything she bought at the Rainbow Shop. Coco was extremely proud of her thickness, which the chewing gums did right by. She said, “I used to rock those, they used to cling to my butt, I used to love it.” That day, Coco wore a turquoise Spandex pair. She swished her way into the bodega. The cleats on her tiny feet clacked against the floor.
    “Yo, what’s up with that girl?” Cesar asked.
    “Yo, what’s up with your friend?” B.J. asked Dorcas. “My friend thinks she’s nice.”
    Coco returned to the sidewalk, and Dorcas filled her in. “Why can’t he talk for himself?” Coco said pertly.
    “I can talk for myself,” Cesar said.
    “So what happened then, why you telling my friend?” Coco asked. She pursed her lips in one corner, lifted her thick eyebrows, and leaned into her hip. On a woman the position would have looked caustic, but not on Coco. Her nose was small and turned up. Her eyes looked happy and playful; there was hope in them, maybe even trust. Cesar held a pack of Mike and Ikes and sunflower seeds in his big hand. A smile formed on those bee-stung lips. Within seconds, the words spilled out.
    “We began to conversate,” Coco recalled. Soon, Coco began cutting school.

    Cesar found himself actually liking Coco, and so he defaulted on his bet with B.J. He liked her more each time they spoke, and they’d spoken every day. They always had things to talk about. He spent less time robbing and mugging, preferring to visit with her instead. A girl could save a boy from the street, but Cesar wasn’t looking to be saved, and Coco wasn’t looking to rescue him. She liked the excitement and wasn’t thinking further than that. She waited for Cesar in the lobby of Dorcas’s mother’s apartment building. They talked and talked and then they began to kiss and kiss. They kissed in Dorcas’s mother’s lobby, in stairwells, on sidewalks, against graffitied walls and ravaged trees. They kissed with Cesar sitting on the hood of a car, bent over Coco’s uplifted chin. They began to make love and Coco stayed silly and happy, not scared and sad like other girls he’d been with. She was spontaneous, which was like being with a