Victor Lavalle - Lucretia and the Kroons

At the end of two months, Sunny had returned to her apartment, but was still being kept from Loochie. Loochie couldn’t understand why.

“I want Sunny to come over,” Loochie complained one evening in late December as she and her mother ate dinner. “You promised I could have a party with her.”

“She’s still too sick.”

“You promised! She’s back and I want to see her. Please , Mom.”

For dessert they ate some more of the birthday cake. Her mother had pointed out that two girls couldn’t eat the whole thing alone. Why let the rest go to waste? Since the failed party Loochie and her mother had been slowly trimming it down. As they debated the issue Loochie’s mother cut herself a slice. Loochie had a little, too. There wasn’t much left.

“I’ll ask her grandmother,” Mom said. They ate at the kitchen table.

“And I don’t want you there,” Loochie added. “Just me and Sunny.”

“That’s impossible,” Mom said between bites.

“We’re twelve. That’s old enough. Do you know what other girls are doing at twelve?”

Loochie’s mother shut her eyes, shook her head. “Don’t tell me.”

But Loochie pressed her case. “I’m not a baby. I walk to school alone. I do my own dishes and my laundry. I can take care of myself.”

“And Sunny?”

“If something bad happens I’ll call your cell phone,” Loochie pleaded.

Really she was embarrassed by her mother. But she couldn’t say that out loud. It would hurt her feelings.

“Just let us have the apartment for a little,” Loochie said. “I want to show her my Christmas presents.”

Mom finished her piece of ice-cream cake and wiped her face with a paper napkin. Then she reached over and wiped Loochie’s face, too. Loochie didn’t resist the touch.

“How long?” Mom finally asked.

“Four hours,” Loochie said.

“Two hours.”

Loochie could tell there’d be no further negotiation and she’d gotten so much already. “Two hours,” she agreed. And she felt confident about what she’d said. What bad things could really happen in so little time?

Sunny and Loochie’s playdate was made through go-betweens. Loochie’s mother and Sunny’s grandmother. Sunny would come down to Loochie’s second try at a twelfth birthday party on a Saturday, the last in December. Loochie had done a little better than normal with gifts that year because her mother felt so bad that Loochie had spent so much time alone, waiting on her sick friend. Loochie even got a new bike. No training wheels and emerald green, just like her dress had been. It was her favorite color. Loochie knew that Sunny’s grandmother would likely tackle the pair before she let her sick granddaughter ride around on the sidewalk. But Loochie and Sunny could pedal the bike back and forth in the living room. The night before she and her mother had rearranged the furniture in the living room. They’d pushed the dining table against one wall. Moved the coffee table from in front of the sofa. This turned the living room into one twenty-foot-long, carpeted track. Loochie couldn’t wait to see Sunny holding the handlebars. And best of all, she and Sunny were going to be in the apartment alone! For two hours. A fact that hadn’t been shared with Sunny’s grandmother. If it had, Sunny grandmother would’ve been perched right there on the living room couch all afternoon, scowling while she watched everything, and what the hell kind of fun would that be?

Loochie’s mother was in the bathroom, getting prepared to go out with Louis. Loochie found her in front of the bathroom sink and watched her, perched at the threshold.

“Louis is late,” Loochie said.

“Your brother always is,” her mother said absently.

She and Loochie were the primary team these days. And Louis was like an alternate member. He was ten years older than Loochie and had moved out of the apartment to Brooklyn when she was seven. She loved him but didn’t really know him anymore. Loochie’s mother, of course, had a different relationship with Louis. She had wrestled and cajoled him into seeing her that day. He didn’t want to come to Queens, but their mother could be persistent. She’d been pestering him to come home for months now.

“Now you don’t tell Louis where I’m taking him, right?” Her mother stopped applying her foundation and looked at Loochie directly.

“Debt counseling,” Loochie said, though she didn’t know what it meant.

“I’m taking him to lunch ,” Loochie’s mother instructed. “Because I miss him.”

Loochie and her mother nodded conspiratorially. Then Mom brushed Loochie back, out of the doorway. She grabbed the door handle and pushed the door. “Mom needs to be alone in here for a few minutes.”

Loochie stepped farther back and the door shut and she heard the sound of her mother settling down onto the toilet. Loochie walked away from the bathroom and back into the living room. She went to the front door. She was too short to see through the peephole yet. They kept a footstool right by the door for this reason. Loochie pulled it over and stepped up and peeked out into the hall. Louis was late, but so was Sunny.

Loochie wore a pair of jeans and a thin green sweater. Her kicks were bright white Keds. Her mother had done her hair that morning, tight little box braids. It was her sporty look. Even though Loochie knew Sunny would never make fun of her she was too embarrassed to try showing off the green gown again.

Loochie checked on the bike, parked at the far end of the living room. She rifled through the small stack of board games her mother had set out on the dining table. Life, Sorry, and Risk. (The last one was left over from her brother’s days in the apartment.) She set out a pillow and blanket on the couch in case Sunny would need to lie down at some point.

She left the living room and went to the kitchen. She opened the freezer and found what was left of her birthday cake. Over the last two months, bit by bit, she and her mother had really chopped that cake down. Cookie Puss wasn’t looking so good. She and her mother had eaten its sugar-cone nose, its ice-cream chin and cheeks. All that was left was one of its big eyes. The “eye” was really just a Flying Saucer ice-cream sandwich. Loochie had guarded this last piece fiercely for the past week. It was for Sunny and no one else. Now she took it out of the freezer and out of the box. She set it on a plate and put the plate on the kitchen counter. She wanted the ice cream to soften enough that even Sunny could get it down. Sometimes she had trouble with solid foods.

As she set the plate on the kitchen table she heard a clunking sound outside the kitchen window. Something small falling down the fire escape. She knew what that sound meant. She heard it again. She watched the window and saw a penny careening down. It pinged against her fire escape and slipped through the grating and fell to the third floor below. She didn’t need to wait for a third penny to drop.

Loochie smiled and ran to the kitchen window, pulled open the security gate, lifted the sash, and peeked her head out. She saw a small hand dangling out of the window right above her own. Sunny! The hand went back inside the apartment slowly. Loochie looked over her shoulder for her mother, but her mother was still in the bathroom. When she looked out the window a second time the small hand was shaking slightly and holding another penny. The slim fingers parted and the penny fell. Loochie reached out to try to catch it but the penny hit the floor of her fire escape landing and shot off wildly, then fell four stories down to the ground. If it had been anything much heavier than a penny, like an egg, or a little girl, it would’ve cracked in two.