Read Online The Heart of Revenge by Richie Drenz - Free Book Online Page A

between her lap under the
table and began typing a text. Pinky laughed out as she watched
Vance and Loriel in adulation,
    “No man! Sure that little girl not yours? Is
how she love you so much man?”
    It sounded like a compliment. Children seemed
to just love Vance, Loriel was one of them, but obviously by the
dirty eyes and the tension in Vance’s hardened look at Pinky, you
could tell Vance took it as an offense. He assumed she was throwing
an insult at him, by saying he’d sleep with the old woman, Ms.
Merl, next-door. Which to me, by the way, would still be better
than him being a twenty-one year old virgin. I waltzed over to take
a chair beside Mommy, her phone dinged as a text came in to reply
to hers. She read it and was replying to it while she replied to
Pinky also,
    “I don’t know why every little children round
the place love him off so much.”
    Pinky wasn’t talking to Mommy. She rolled her
eye at Mom, turned her back and walked straight out of the room
while Mommy was talking to her. Mommy turned her head to Pinky
walking out and called out to her,
    “Pinky, remember we taking some picture now,
don't leave yet.”
    Pinky didn’t stop walking nor did she looked
back at Mom, but she did look back at me and with a mischievous
laugh she replied,
    “Mi don’t want take not a picture .. ask the
one beside you, ’cause it look like she love take picture.” She did
her mix-up laugh, a big deep belly laugh “Wooii,” and trailed off
adding, “Mi gone pee-pee.”
    Loriel’s giggling could be heard in the
distance. Vance looked at me with a scrunched forehead, I could see
his brain muscling, trying to figure out what Pinky meant by that.
He knew Pinky meant something more from her laugh and gesture.
Mommy turned and she too knitted her forehead at me. She knew I
hated pictures. So what was Pinky talking about? Mommy put her
phone down on the table. I looked away from everyone and gazed at
my black shadow that was on the table. The light from Mom’s phone
was fading to black, fading, fading until the light disappeared and
her phone returned to black. The light in my shame also went
out.
    I felt squeezed, the room felt tight around
me, Mommy asked.
    “When since you love take picture?”
    The outside roof of my nose tip was spotted
with tiny round sweats and my palms were getting wetter. I
answered.
    “Me?... Me? ... I. I don't.”
    “So what Pinky talking ’bout?”
    “I’m clueless. Pinky just love chat.” Pinky’s
voice excitedly bellowed from all the way down the hallway.
    “Mi body! RAAAEE!!”
    Mommy turned both eyebrows inward at me.
Afterward, she relaxed her face, gently placed one hand over mine,
her other hand wiping the sweat off my nose,
    “You really nervous eeh honey?”
    “Yeah. Today is really big.”
    “You know you have to pull through with this
right? You know this is the only way.”
    “Don’t worry Mom.” I took a short thought
about things, then comforted her. “I know. You stop worry. Ok?”
    “I’m not worrying. Just remember you doing
the right thing, OK?” She squeezed my hand and looked toward Vance.
I knew how important it was to Vance. I had the urge to wipe my
sweating palms on the side of my gown but I didn't want to wrinkle
it, I wanted my dress to remain looking neat. Vance used one muddy
finger to scratch at the liverspot on his shoulder and Mom
said,
    “Vance everyday you helping this lady with
garden, you can’t be working out yourself so much for people like
an idiot enuh. She paying you?”
    “No. But she’s old Mom. What’s wrong with
helping her?”
    Mommy would do anything in the world to help
her children, herself and whoever she cared about, but everyone
else she didn’t give jack-shit about. She hated to see any of us
giving away anything. That’s the only thing about Mommy that
irritated me. I butted in,
    “Nothing’s wrong with him helping out the
little old lady, leave him alone.”
    “Is something she looking from a young