What's Going On

Early on during Christian's first birthday party, I sat at the kitchen table with my sister Erica and her two girlfriends, listening to them chat. I always wonder what they talk about--one look at Erica's cell phone inbox might as well be Greek: nigga and beez and chillite. Truly their language is incomprehensible, but I was doing my best not to judge them and I didn't once correct Erica or anyone for using the "I be" subject-verb disagreement. I may just be growing up.

So they talked about food and it seems as if they only kind they ever eat is the fast kind. I love to eat--anyone knows this--but after having read Fast Food Nation I just really can't stand the idea of consuming meat with shit in it. Fast food, for me, is disgusting and the new opiate of the masses (unless I'm incredibly drunk: then, genius). But. I didn't tell them this. I acted impressed that Erica hadn't eaten a TacoBell Grande since the beginning of this second pregnancy. Then her thin friend says, "Yee-a, I haven't been able to eat no Taco Bell in weeks." When the fat friend asks why, Erica cuts in and says, "Let me tell her! Ha! It's cuz she's pregnant!" The fat one smiles, says, "Nah-uh, girl, I pregnant too!" They spend the next minute or so falling all over the news and talking about the color of their pregnant throw-up--sometimes green and sometimes yellow and sometimes clear (the best kind!), and I don't tell them to stop, even though I'm trying to eat, and even though yesterday Erica wouldn't hear my very fun story about my having to wipe Lala's ass at the hospital. I wasn't even giving specific gruesome details! It was just part of a larger narrative about how ridiculously attached me and Lala are that now I've even see all parts of her ass inside and out! Big whoop!

But maybe I'm not growing up after all. Because after their throw-up convo dies down I clear my throat conspicuously and say, "I've also got an announcement to make: I am on the pill."

Across the room, my mom nearly chokes. She makes a bigger deal out of this statement than perhaps is necessary. "I mean, what, is there no birth control on the Westbank? What the hell is going on with you girls?" Later she tells me in private, "I loved your response. I mean, that was awesome." I didn't know I was making a political statement. But after the arrival of five more girls with ten+ kids in tow, I knew that something was happening here, and what it was was exactly clear: if having kids at an extremely young age is cool, my sister is the coolest. And her friends are doing their damndest to catch up. In her world, Erica is someone to be revered. Look: one little boy, one on the way, boyfriend in jail. How fucking cool: she can handle anything.

A snag: if handling their children theoretically is to be revered, in reality, it proves to be a problem. These girls like to talk, and when one of their kids slaps another, like one curly-haired devil child slapped and scratched my adored nephew, no one is there to mitigate damages. They're popping gum through words. At one point Christian ran toward me crying, a trickle of blood under his nose. I witnessed the whole thing--it was the two-year-old curly haired bitch who popped him a good one. "Where's the mother?" I asked. The five possible suspects sat around the dining room table and laughed, like, big deal. A little girl scratching a little boy is funny, you see: gender role reversal. But I was pissed, and so was my sister Aimee. "God, Erica has some brown-trash friends, and I'm gonna beat one of them bitches asses!" When Aimee is mad at me, I am fearful, and I call my friends to ask them if I'm a good person and if at least they still love me. When Aimee is mad at someone else, it's brilliant. I just stand back and watch. Because Aimee's arms were folded tight and because her eyes were slit like the dining room blinds, one girl stepped forward to claim her devil child and make her apologize to Christian. Still not satisfied, Aimee said, not so under her breath, "That's right, do your job."

Which got me to thinking what the jobs of these girls are going to be in life. What are they destined to? I've got to think Erica will not be a Winn Dixie cashier for life. That she will becoming a reflecting person, a person who plans, a person with goals who actually fulfills them. But I haven't seen that happen yet. With two kids before her 19th birthday, though, she is definitely a lot cooler than I am. I'm 29 next month.